


Strangers, Again

by Copperscript



Series: Arrancar Ichigo/Captain Grimmjow AU [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: (oh the pining...), Alternate Universe, Angst, Arrancar Kurosaki Ichigo, Captain Grimmjow Jaegerjaques, Drama, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hollow Kurosaki Ichigo, M/M, Pining, Romance, Shinigami Grimmjow Jaegerjaques, aka the AU where Grimmjow has a pet Hollow named Ichigo, and Grimmjow is obsessed, but the obsession is mutual, captive Ichigo, reverse au, the AU where Ichigo is an overpowered Hollow amongst Shinigami
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:20:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25385194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Copperscript/pseuds/Copperscript
Summary: [Reverse AU] There lives a Hollow in Hueco Mundo, a terrifying creature of black fire and red blood, who defies everything the Shinigami thought they knew about Hollows. It has taken notice of Gotei 13 Captain Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.  Grimmjow, in turn, is enthralled.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Series: Arrancar Ichigo/Captain Grimmjow AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1822351
Comments: 135
Kudos: 702





	1. The Monster in the Sands

…

Hueco Mundo’s featureless sands stretched beyond the reach of eyes.

The Senkaimon had deposited the operation squad out of sight but within a half mile of their destination, the columnar formation known as the Devil’s Altar which was currently at the heart of unprecedented Hollow activity.

This mission was to be simple reconnaissance. A joint operation by the second and ninth divisions—stealth ops and security forces—with the primary purpose of investigating, not engaging, the disturbance in Hueco Mundo reported in the latest intelligence briefing. In and out—no swords drawn, no blood spilled.

If Grimmjow had believed that, he wouldn’t have bothered coming.

Suì-Fēng was to Grimmjow’s left, and behind her, four members of her division. And at his back, the four men from his own division followed their captain at a close distance.

“Captain Jaegerjaquez, you will allow me to take the lead in this,” warned Suì-Fēng, in echo of Captain-Commander Yamamoto’s orders. “The ninth division is here for backup only, in case we are overwhelmed. Keep your sword sheathed unless the situation calls for it.”

But Grimmjow had every intention of scratching the itch he’d been cultivating for weeks now. Weeks of no missions, of having no reason to draw his sword other than to clean its blade, and Grimmjow was itching for something to get his blood going. “ _Tch_.”

“Captain Jaegerjaquez.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The Devil’s Altar pulled into view, a tall white spire surrounded by dark clouds on the backdrop of an otherwise empty landscape. Grimmjow stopped short, as did Suì-Fēng and all the Shinigami behind them, as an oppressive swell of Hollow reiatsu washed over them.

Suì-Fēng shielded her face with one arm with a gasping breath. Grimmjow didn’t blame her; the air sat thick in his lungs, heavy on his skin like an oil slick. If it was uncomfortable for him, it must be near crippling for the men behind him.

He squinted his eyes.

The clouds swirling the Devil’s Altar were no clouds at all.

Hollows swarmed the air, circling the tall column in numbers beyond counting. The black ground, which had appeared at first like a vast lake around the base of the spire, was another a teeming mass of Hollows. Among the hordes, Gillians rose above like great black trees from a forest floor, all moving in staggering synchrony. Their shrieks and moans echoed in Grimmjow’s head like a mad fever-dream.

“What… _what is this?_ ” one of Grimmjow’s men asked in a whispered voice.

The intelligence reports had far, _far_ underestimated the extent of the situation.

Grimmjow drew his sword. Suì-Fēng did not even rebuke him for doing so. They drew closer, moving from dune to dune to obscure their movements.

There were solitary figures within the lake of Hollows, moving against the flow in self-determined patterns, much smaller than the Gillians or even the lower class Hollows. Grimmjow had fought Adjuchas before on a handful of occasions, but he had never seen more than two or three at a time. The ones below numbered easily in the hundreds.

Grimmjow had never seen anything like it. From the stunned silence of his companions, neither had anyone else.

What the _fuck_ had drawn so many Hollows into one place?

Suì-Fēng needed to see no more. “We retreat.”

Grimmjow had come hoping for a fight, but he was not stupid. This was far beyond the magnitude of the original intelligence report. Ten Shinigami, even with two Captains among them, could not take on this infestation. They were equipped for a rainstorm, and had walked instead into a hurricane. Venturing further even if only on reconnaissance was a fool’s quest, because the instant even one of those Hollows caught scent or sight of them, the entire horde would turn on them.

They pulled back.

It was back to Seireitei now, back to the expense reports that third-seat Hisagi Shūhei had piled on his desk a week ago with a grudging reminder they were _due_ _tomorrow, so don’t put it off again, Captain, because we really can’t afford to be late—_

Maybe Hisagi should do them himself, if he was so worried.

Grimmjow scowled. Now he had sand in his shoes and his socks and everywhere else he didn’t want to think about, and he hadn’t even seen any action for his trouble.

_What a fucking waste of my time._

In one moment, the path to the Senkaimon rendezvous point was clear. In the next, something stood in Grimmjow’s way.

Grimmjow leapt back by force of instinct. Suì-Fēng did the same with a shout.

“Captain!”

Grimmjow was deaf to his men’s yells.

The Hollow before him now commanded his attention with no leniency.

It took the shape and size of a man—small for a Hollow, but size was a not an approximation for a Hollow’s strength. The monster before Grimmjow was carved from white stone, a statue of hard muscle on a lean frame, bare from the waist up, its face covered by a fearsome white skull mask which bore two great horns jutting forward. An orange mane of hair teased gently by the wind was the only flutter of movement from this beast.

This statue was aware. Behind the mask, yellow animal eyes pinned Grimmjow in place like needles in a butterfly. Grimmjow’s world shrunk down to this predator in front of him and its eyes flaying him open.

_Move. Move, goddamnit. Fucking MOVE._

Grimmjow could not move. A statue, this Hollow was, but Grimmjow was too. He stared, white encircling the blue of his irises.

_Vasto Lorde._

But even as this thought entered his mind, Grimmjow recognized its error. No. This…this thing looked like a Vasto Lorde, but it was something else entirely.

The spell upon Grimmjow lifted. He stumbled to one knee, but rose just as swiftly, Pantera in hand and a roar in his heart.

The Hollow raised its right arm, its clawed hand clasped around—

_Is that a zanpakutō?_

The sword gleamed a beautiful, deadly black from hilt to tip. Grimmjow had never seen anything like it before, but he had not even a full second to take it in. It was instinct, not conscious thought that brought Pantera up in front of him to block that sword from slicing his face open.

When had the Hollow moved? One moment it had been standing before him, then Grimmjow had blinked—and the Hollow was two inches from his face.

His gut churned, his heart stirred finally to joy, the exhilarating rush of blood in his ears and alight with life—Grimmjow’s face split with a smile wider than his jaws. Pantera roared in his mind, and for once there was no reason to prolong his sword’s pleas. Grimmjow broke the sword lock, leaping back a few steps, and answered his sword’s call.

“ _Grind, Pantera!_ ”

The sword dissipated, hilt and all, taking its place instead upon his forearms in cruelly curved blades on armored bracers. The Hollow tilted its head, and Grimmjow laughed.

There was shouting around them—some commotion from the other Shinigami on this operation—but Grimmjow didn’t care. Nothing else mattered right now. It was just him, and this Hollow whose monstrous reiatsu had Grimmjow in thrall to it.

“Hollow!” he screamed. “I am Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, Captain of the Gotei Thirteen’s Ninth Division! Tell me your name!”

The Hollow opened its mouth—the jagged fangs of its white skull parting to reveal a gaping black maw—and roared. The cry rose high and inhuman, and if ever a mere _sound_ could lay touch, Grimmjow felt it in the prickling trail it ran down his spine. His hair stood on end.

Grimmjow’s eyes were wide, his mouth open and panting, his face manic with anticipation.

He blinked—and the Hollow was an inch from his face, its breath hot on Grimmjow’s cheek, that black sword clashed against the arm blade Grimmjow had raised in self-defense.

Grimmjow brought down his other arm, aimed for the creature’s chest. _Blink—_ and the Hollow was gone.

 _Blink_. A clawed hand clasped Grimmjow’s shoulder from behind. Grimmjow spun and slashed, his blade cutting through empty air.

Red splashed across his vision. Grimmjow stopped—had one of his blows landed? But then he looked down his own body, and his flesh was cut open from his collar all the way down to his hip. The pain struck him a moment later, so sudden and fierce that Grimmjow staggered. The sand beneath him had turned dark and wet. Was all that blood his own?

“Captain!”

When had he been cut?

The Hollow stood over Grimmjow. Those eyes—yellow on black sclera—were not simply looking at him, but _into_ him. As though it was not enough for it to simply cut Grimmjow open; it wanted more—to peel back his skin, get inside him and dissect him, eat him alive.

But its sword hung at its side, not raised to deliver the killing blow.

“ _Nigeki Kessatsu!_ ”

The Hollow raised its hand, and it had Suì-Fēng clutched by the wrist. Grimmjow had not even seen her approach—Suì-Fēng’s flash step had always been exceptional even amongst the elite of Seireitei—but the Hollow had seen her coming and neutralized her oncoming attack without even raising its sword. It hardly paused to consider her before tossing her aside like a rag doll.

What the _fuck_ was this creature?

Grimmjow leapt to his feet, head spinning. The Hollow turned back to him, and it advanced. With an animal snarl, Grimmjow met his challenge and raised his blades, but the Hollow did not raise its own.

It only stared at him again.

Its wordless gaze was like needles under Grimmjow’s skin. “I got something on my face?” he yelled. “Or you think I’m not good enough for your sword now? Come at me; I got blood to repay you!”

Suì-Fēng had reappeared at the Hollow’s throat, and this time her sword was back in its sealed state and aimed at the jugular. The Hollow dodged her attack, but she did not yield. Like an angry wasp, she reared back to strike again, and again.

“To the Senkaimon!” she shouted. “Jaegerjaquez, take the men back!”

Grimmjow could give a shit about the men or the Senkaimon. Fuck that, he wasn’t done here yet.

He took a step towards them, and the ground swayed beneath him. Fuck. Had he lost that much blood already?

“Captain, let’s go!” Two of Grimmjow’s men were at his side. “Hurry, the Senkaimon is closing.”

Suì-Fēng’s men were already nearly to the gates. Grimmjow looked back from the gates to the Hollow. Suì-Fēng had driven it back a few paces, but the Hollow was barely lifting its sword to ward off her blows.

Was it just…toying with her?

Perhaps Suì-Fēng sensed this too, for she abandoned her fight and appeared in an instant at Grimmjow’s side. “We retreat,” she said, and before he could growl a word back, she had grabbed him by the shoulder and flash stepped both of them to the Senkaimon.

The wooden gates of the Senkaimon were closing.

Grimmjow stood behind them, the entire front of his robes and white captain’s haori doused in his own blood, Pantera still released upon his arms.

Across the sands, the Hollow stood eerily still, moving only by the wind caught in its long hair. It faced them, and though it was impossible to see from this distance, Grimmjow _felt_ its eyes and knew they were fixed upon him.

Grimmjow scowled.

That Hollow saw something it wanted to challenge, did it? It wanted Grimmjow’s attention, did it? Well, it had his fucking attention.

“Hollow!” Grimmjow stood tall and shouted, in voice loud enough to carry across the distance. His men turned to stare at him, but Grimmjow didn’t care. All that mattered was that this Hollow _heard_ him, and remembered his voice, his name, and his sword. “We’re not done yet. Your sword has taken my blood; next time, mine will have yours! Next time, I’ll beat your name out of you!”

Something solidified in Grimmjow’s heart. He would remember that reiatsu, that mask, that black sword. He would come back. He didn’t know when, or how, but he would come back to Hueco Mundo, track this Hollow down, and carve those fucking infernal yellow eyes right out of its skull so that it would never be able to stare through Grimmjow again.

The Hollow did not move.

It stood there a statue, a living monument amidst lifeless white sand and black sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hito has published a one-shot in this AU verse, set farther down the timeline of this story. Click [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25195096) to read. Beware major SPOILERS. But also keep in mind, _the story does not end there._


	2. The Four-Way Binding Harness

Suì-Fēng flash-stepped Grimmjow straight into the fourth division’s infirmary.

Grimmjow lay in the sickbay bed as eighth-seat Ogidō Harunobu worked to stem his bleeding, but his mind lingered still in Hueco Mundo, on that yellow-eyed, demon-horned Hollow whose name he still did not know.

“It was a Hollow,” Suì-Fēng was saying to Unohana in the hallway just outside. Grimmjow listened with only half an ear. “A Vasto Lorde—” She was wrong, but Grimmjow didn’t correct her. Vasto Lorde was an approximate description. He did not know what else to call that thing, or if there was even a name for it.

“You are lucky,” said Ogidō quietly. “A little deeper, and this wound would have eviscerated you.”

Grimmjow said nothing. Ogidō too was wrong. It was not luck. If evisceration was what that Hollow had intended, then Grimmjow would not be awake right now, watching a healer soak towel after towel with his blood.

Ogidō was adept in healing kidō, and the bleeding slowed to a trickle and then a stop. Grimmjow’s vision blurred around the edges, but he noticed when the healer switched to a different kaidō spell to close the wound. He stopped the man with a vice grip around his wrist.

“Use stitches.”

“Excuse me?” Ogidō asked, as though he had misheard. “Captain Jaegerjaquez, this wound will close far faster and more cleanly with kaidō. I really think—”

“Stitches,” Grimmjow growled, and Ogidō’s bones creaked under his fingers.

“Yes sir.”

As Ogidō went to retrieve suture supplies, Grimmjow looked down his chest. A whisper of Hollow reiatsu lingered in his torn flesh, and he stamped it into his memory like a bloodhound with a scent. Without kaidō, this wound would leave a deep scar spanning almost the entire length of his torso, impossible to miss or forget. Grimmjow fingered the edge of the wound gingerly.

There could be no better souvenir.

…

“A Vasto Lorde, you say?”

Kyōraku Shunsui turned his head down the line of captains assembled before Captain-Commander Yamamoto. His gaze found Grimmjow and took in the bandages which wrapped his entire torso. Ogidō had done a fine job stitching the wound closed, but the white linen was still spotted with patches of red.

The captain meeting had been called as soon as Grimmjow was cleared from the fourth division’s infirmary. Grimmjow had stayed quiet thus far, letting Suì-Fēng brief everyone present on the true situation at the Devil’s Altar. But more pressing than the maelstrom of Hollows gathering in one place was the other news they brought—of _one_ Hollow in particular.

“Yes,” Suì-Fēng confirmed. “A Vasto Lorde.” She described it:

Human-like in shape and size. White-skinned, with a horned mask and a sword which resembled a zanpakutō. It moved with sonído which had overtaken her flash step, its reiatsu was far greater than Adjuchas-class, and—

“That was no Vasto Lorde.”

Every eye in the room turned to Grimmjow. He slid his hands into the pockets of his hakama and frowned. “I have battled a Vasto Lorde before. This Hollow was different.”

Suì-Fēng could be forgiven her mistake. She had never personally encountered a Vasto Lorde class Hollow before. But Grimmjow had, and the white Hollow they had met this morning was in an entirely different league.

“Then what was it?”

Grimmjow had no answer to that.

“A human-sized Hollow with a zanpakutō?” Kyōraku tipped his straw hat back. He was the only one present who could muster a faint smile. “Sounds like an Arrancar. What do you think, Yama-jii?”

 _Arrancar_. The idea struck Grimmjow like a bolt of lightning. A Hollow who had removed its own mask, and in doing so, attained Shinigami-like powers, including the use of a zanpakutō. But—

“It had a full mask,” said Suì-Fēng. “It cannot be an Arrancar. What was more, it did not speak a word. Arrancar are intelligent, and are capable of speech and thought. It was fixated on Captain Jaegerjaquez, but it did not answer when spoken to.”

“Fixated…?” Kyōraku blinked.

“Yes. It singled him out immediately, and ignored the rest of us to attack him.” Suì-Fēng crossed her arms across her chest and addressed Grimmjow. “Have you ever seen that Hollow before, Captain Jaegerjaquez?”

“No.” A creature that effortlessly powerful was not something Grimmjow could have ever forgotten.

“Captain Jaegerjaquez.” This time, it was Hitsugaya who spoke. “Since it was you that fought the Hollow, you can tell us most about it. What did you witness?”

_Reiatsu like black fire, smoldering with a taste of ash which settled in the back of his throat. Eyes acid-yellow, the eyes of a beast which had Grimmjow’s scent in its mouth and his belly in its teeth. Mouth like a great black chasm. A gaping hole where its heart should have been._

Grimmjow searched for words, but they ran through his mind like water through cupped hands. He looked upwards, as those assembled wore silence like a cloak awaiting his verdict.

“A beast,” he said at last.

_We tremble in awe of that which cannot be explained._

He offered no more. What else could he say to explain a thing which must be seen, not told?

…

That night, Grimmjow knelt at the desk in his office with a blank mission report in front of him and a pen in hand. He had been at this for the last half hour, and the paper was blank but for a large ink splotch from where he had rested his pen.

Written mission reports were mundane; all higher ranked officers were required to document the events of their missions promptly after a verbal debriefing. And Grimmjow’s verbal description of the white Hollow at the captain meeting today had been lacking, apparently.

But there were no words to adequately describe it, and it was no less impossible to put the words to paper than it had been to shape them with his tongue.

Grimmjow put down the pen and laid on his back on the cushioned mat where he meditated with Pantera.

He closed his eyes, but he could still see the Hollow’s yellow eyes boring into him.

Suì-Fēng had been right about one thing. That Hollow had singled Grimmjow out. Grimmjow had never seen this Hollow before, he was certain of that, but it had focused on him to the point of ignoring all else. For what purpose?

To devour him? Perhaps a captain-class Shinigami’s reiatsu was too tempting a meal to pass up for a ravenous Hollow too powerful to be troubled with smaller prey.

But no—it had ignored Suì-Fēng, a fellow captain, treating her as a mere distraction.

Why had it merely cut him, when it could have killed him instead?

But to this Grimmjow already knew the answer, for he and this white Hollow spoke the same language.

It had wanted his attention. It had wanted Grimmjow to take notice of it. Suì-Fēng was wrong about its intelligence too. The Hollow had not spoken because it had not needed to. What words could speak more loudly to Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez than a sword which took his blood, which left him a scar to remember its biting edge?

The Hollow had been saying _hello._

Grimmjow smirked. He reached for Pantera; he sought and found his comfort in the solid weight of her hilt and brought her to his chest.

Next time, he would return the greeting properly.

…

It felt strange, returning to life as usual in Seireitei after the failed mission. Grimmjow slept in the same bed, in the same room of his captain’s quarters in the ninth division barracks. He ate, he trained, he worked. All was as it had been before the Devil’s Altar and the white Hollow, and yet…not.

Somewhere out there was a beast with yellow eyes and white horns, reiatsu that burned the air and a sword black like the starless sky of Hueco Mundo.

And now that Grimmjow knew it still lived in a world beyond his reach, that it breathed and walked and slept somewhere beneath a different sky…he could not release it from his mind.

Grimmjow’s body had returned to Soul Society, but in quiet moments when he sat at his desk with a stack of papers before him, or lay awake in bed at night, his mind wandered back to white sands beneath starless black sky.

That Hollow had wanted Grimmjow’s eyes upon it. But in turn, its eyes lingered upon Grimmjow in every waking moment also.

The wound on his chest healed cleanly and in its place a thick scar traced the path taken by that stunning black blade. Grimmjow wore his robes loose down his front, and the fresh scar marked him prominently across the chest and trailed out of sight beneath his uniform towards his hip.

In every reflection he passed, it drew his eye and ached a whisper of pain.

The post-mission debrief was not the last meeting Grimmjow would have to attend regarding the white Hollow and the activity at the Devil’s Altar.

Over the course of the next two weeks, his presence had been demanded at three more meetings. He ignored the summons for the third; there was no more he could tell them than what he and Suì-Fēng had already said, and Grimmjow had better things to do than to stand around listening to endless conjecture and planning.

The Hollow, _‘White_ ,’ had caught more than Grimmjow’s attention. Following the failed mission, the Onmitsukidō’s executive militia deployed several scouting missions to Hueco Mundo in the vicinity of the Devil’s Altar for monitoring of the Hollow maelstrom and of White.

News of White was the only thing from these missions Grimmjow cared to keep an ear out for, but the Hollow remained elusive. By all accounts, its reiatsu lingered near the Devil’s Altar, but impossible to pinpoint, impossible to locate. It had not been sighted since Grimmjow and Suì-Fēng’s joint mission.

“What a shy Hollow,” said Kyōraku one day.

Grimmjow glanced at him.

He sat at the edge of his division’s training field, watching some of his unseated officers in their daily training beneath the midday sun. The men’s shouts and the _thwack_ of their wooden practice swords droned a comfortable, familiar noise to the backdrop of Grimmjow’s thoughts. Kyōraku sat down beside him, sake dish in hand, head shaded by his ridiculous straw hat.

Grimmjow had never given indication that he either wanted or appreciated Kyōraku’s companionship, but Kyōraku was prone to sitting down uninvited and dropping unwanted conversation when it suited him. Had it been anyone else, Grimmjow would have made his displeasure loudly known. But Kyōraku Shunsui, beneath his sake breath and that absurd pink kimono, was a formidable man and often, a surprising source of information.

Grimmjow didn’t answer, for he knew that Kyōraku would continue talking whether he wished him to or not, and sure enough—

“Perhaps it will come out if you show your face there again, Grimmjow-san.”

The apathy on Grimmjow’s face turned swiftly to intensity.

The thought had crossed his mind more than a few times during these past weeks, that the reason the scouting missions had turned up nothing on White was because White was waiting for something.

Kyōraku’s expression was unchanged—a half smile on his lips as he sipped from his dish, his face in shadow beneath the straw hat askew.

“What’s the old man think?”

“Yama-jii?” Kyōraku poured out more sake, and offered Grimmjow a dish. Grimmjow ignored it. “He is running out of patience for the Onmitsukidō scouts. He thinks the white Hollow may be the crux of the Hollow gathering, so he is eager to flush it out.”

Yamamoto believed the white Hollow was…what? Amassing an army?

It was not so far-fetched an idea. Adjuchas were known to command lower-class Hollows, including Gillians, to fight and attack on their behalf. If White was truly intelligent, then it certainly had the power to do something similar.

“If the scouting missions continue to fail, then I expect Yama-jii will try other methods.” Kyōraku tipped his straw hat forward. “Perhaps he will send you to draw it out. The Hollow gathering must be dispersed, or a spillover is guaranteed.”

Hollows crossed from Hueco Mundo to the living world regularly, but mostly in small numbers and by random chance. But areas of heightened Hollow activity were prone to spillover events, as their concentrated reiatsu ripped the dimensional barrier and permitted free passage of Hollows into the living world. Spillover events were rare, but devastating.

With the massive size of the gathering at the Devil’s Altar, the inevitable spillover would be nothing short of catastrophic. It would decimate any human city near the dimensional rip.

Kyōraku was right. The Hollows must be dispersed. And if White truly was at the center of this all, gathering an army of its lesser kin, then it must be dealt with as well.

Grimmjow cast his gaze back out to the training field. His heart paced a little faster.

“ _Tch_. Send me back to Hueco Mundo. I’ll drag that white Hollow out of hiding.”

“Hm.”

“What?” Grimmjow narrowed his eyes. “You don’t think I can?”

“It is not that,” said Kyōraku. He held his sake dish between thumb and fingers, slowly swirling the drink within its rim. It had the clarity of water, and the subtle fragrance of plums. “But a tiger does not hide from a doe.”

No. Of course not.

“It is waiting,” Grimmjow said, at last giving breath to this whispered thought which had plagued his mind.

Kyōraku nodded, and tipped the sake dish to his mouth. “It waits,” he agreed. “For what, I wonder?”

Grimmjow knew. He did not know why, but he knew for what.

The Hollow waited for _him._

…

A day later, Grimmjow was called back to the assembly hall. This time, he answered the summons.

The wood floors and white corridors of the first division compound stretched long and pristine before him. Officers of the first division halted in place and dipped their heads in deference as he passed, but Grimmjow’s thoughts were turned towards the meeting ahead.

There must be a new development for Yamamoto to be calling another captains’ meeting. Had he decided to send Grimmjow back into Hueco Mundo?

Every captain was in attendance, but accompanying Kurotsuchi Mayuri were his lieutenant and several higher seated officers of the twelfth division.

Strange. Non-captains did not set foot in Yamamoto’s assembly hall.

Three strikes of Yamamoto’s staff on the wood floor announced the meeting commencing.

“We have but a single objective,” the Captain-Commander said. “Disperse the infestation, and prevent a spillover.”

“The Onmitsukidō scouts have failed to return any information on White.” Suì-Fēng’s jaw clenched tight, and Grimmjow read in this subtle mark her shame. As commander of the stealth force, their failure was also hers. “So we must resort to more direct methods to draw it out.”

“Lesser Hollows flock to sources of great power. If this white Hollow is the source of the infestation, then we must neutralize it.” Yamamoto turned to Grimmjow. “Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. The Hollow responded to you.”

There was an itch in Grimmjow’s spine, beneath the skin, beyond the reach of nails or claws. This itch had been gnawing at him for weeks now, planted in him by yellow eyes and the cutting edge of a black sword. Grimmjow needed it scratched.

He had been waiting for this.

“Set me loose in Hueco Mundo.” Grimmjow laid a hand on Pantera’s hilt. “I’ve got blood to settle.”

“Your enthusiasm is unnecessary.”

Kurotsuchi’s voice made Grimmjow’s skin prickle. The painted clown raised his finger, spindly long with an even longer black painted nail, and wagged it before Grimmjow’s face.

“Beat it down, if you _can_ —”

Grimmjow’s hackles rose.

“—but when it’s time, I’m taking it.”

 _Him?_ Kurotsuchi thought _he_ was going to take the white Hollow? He thought _he_ had some right to it? Where the _fuck_ did he get off, laying claim on Grimmjow’s mark?

Grimmjow’s shoulders stiffened, a snarl on his lips as he advanced on Kurotsuchi.

“Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.” The Captain-Commander did not move, but the weight in his words and the steely command there halted Grimmjow in his tracks. “You will go to Hueco Mundo, accompanied by teams from the ninth, second, and tenth divisions. Kurotsuchi Mayuri and members of the twelfth will accompany you to lay down the trap to confine and bind the white Hollow.”

Confine and…bind—?

“We will capture it, then retrieve it here to be dealt with accordingly.”

“It will make a wonderful research subject. There is so much we may learn—”

Grimmjow stepped forward. “Capture it?” he spat. What kind of cowardly bullshit was this? “I came for a fight. I’ll beat it to shit—”

“The safety of the living world is of greater importance than your bloodthirst, Captain Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.” Yamamoto rebuked, before turning his ancient, grizzled face back to Kurotsuchi. “Is the trap ready?”

Kurotsuchi clacked his nails together. “It is ready.” He retrieved something from his robes and held it up. “These are how we will do it.”

In his hands were four spikes of sand-colored metal, each as long as his forearm. Kurotsuchi walked to the center of the assembly hall, knelt and placed a spike to the floor. He raised his sheathed zanpakutō.

_Clang._

He hammered the spike down with the hilt of his sword, and the wood floorboard splintered. Three more times he did this, at points equidistant from one another.

“Nemu.” Kurotsuchi crooked a finger at his lieutenant, and she came forward, into the center of the square space marked by a spike at each point. She stood there, her face a blank slate, her eyes empty like those of a fish.

Grimmjow had never liked her. Why had Kurotsuchi even bothered to craft her with a face when she never used it?

Kurotsuchi paced beyond the perimeter of the marked space, one hand raised, two fingers extended. “ _The years extend without death_ ,” he incanted as he turned one of its corners. “ _What is the limit of longevity?_ ”

The incantation was spoken as a question. How strange.

“ _Where is the place of immortality?_ ”

The floor thrummed, ambient reishi in the air vibrant and electric. The anchoring spikes lit up like rods of molten gold. Kurotsuchi’s steps fell like black echoes upon the floor.

“ _What do the giants guard?_ ”

Nemu shuddered.

“ _The spreading nine-stemmed nuphar, and the cannabis flowers, where must they grow?_ ”

Kurotsuchi stepped back. A curtain of golden light fell between each spike, enclosing Nemu on all sides as she dropped like a puppet with its strings cut all at once. Her reiatsu plummeted to nothing. Unmoving, with no reiatsu…she may as well be dead.

“Captain Kurotsuchi! Is she—”

“She is not dead.” Kurotsuchi walked around the column of light which stretched up and through the ceiling. “She is confined.”

He stepped back.

“I have long sought to create a spell powered by the positive feedback of its subject’s own reiatsu.” Kurotsuchi stopped and peered into the light. Nemu lay motionless. “Most kidō spells are inflexible, one-size-fit-all. If the subject is stronger than the kidō, then the kidō may be overpowered. But this…”

Kurotsuchi bared two rows of straight yellow teeth in a lurid grin.

“…this cage draws upon the captive’s own reiatsu to power it. The stronger the captive, the stronger the cage. It is capable of holding any creature, no matter its strength. An open-ended incantation paired with four anchors made of highly refined _sekkiseki_ enable this highly versatile cage. It is the perfect immobilizing device.”

Kurotsuchi always boasted incessantly about his inventions, delighting in his own cleverness and eager to explain the workings of his mind. But even Grimmjow had to admit this was ingenious—an elegant, yet simple cage that relied on its captive’s own strength to subdue it.

With a wave of his hand, the light dissipated, and the four anchoring spikes faded back into dull metal.

“The difficulty will be in in timing.” Kurotsuchi stepped over a motionless Nemu. He did not turn as two of his division members retrieved her and delivered her out of assembly hall. “It takes a length of three and a half seconds for this cage to come into full power from a dormant state. The subject must be held within the four square meters of the cage’s perimeter for that length of time.”

Three and a half seconds.

For a creature like White, whose sonído had surpassed Suì-Fēng’s flash step, three and a half seconds might as well be an eternity.

“How will we manage that?” Komamura Sajin asked, in echo of Grimmjow’s doubts. “If this Hollow is as powerful as reported, holding it immobile for even a single second would be a challenge.”

A long silence fell, and Grimmjow’s memory turned to that last encounter.

It was difficult to measure time in the thick of a fight. Senses stretched in battle, the crossing of swords slowed time to a crawl, but he felt sure—he was _certain_ that Hollow had stood motionless at times to watch him, to listen to him. Particularly when Grimmjow spoke. The white Hollow had stopped everything to listen to his voice. And at the end, as Grimmjow had watched the Senkaimon closing on the melancholic sands of Hueco Mundo, that Hollow had stood still like a statue with its gaze fixed upon Grimmjow.

“It will be still,” he said. Three and a half seconds was an eternity, but the white Hollow would watch Grimmjow for longer. The Hollow would be captivated, first by Grimmjow, and then by the cage. “I can hold it.”

“How?”

“He is right.” Suì-Fēng caught Grimmjow’s gaze, and he knew she must have thought the same. “I expect that Hollow’s fixation on Captain Jaegerjaquez will remain unchanged. He can keep it occupied and distracted within the perimeter of the trap for that long.”

“You are certain of this, Captain Jaegerjaquez?”

Yellow eyes burned in Grimmjow’s memory. He nodded.

“Then we shall proceed with the mission.”

…

The mission was planned for three days after the captains’ meeting. By the twelfth division’s estimates, the likelihood of an imminent spillover event necessitated waiting no longer than that.

In those three days, Grimmjow became intimately familiar with the cage. He spent more time in the twelfth division’s compound than he would have liked, learning the ins and outs of the kidō trap and rehearsing the mission objective.

The Four-Way Binding Harness, as Kurotsuchi named it, was as perfect a cage as there could be…as long as it was activated properly.

“As long as _you_ do your part right,” Kurotsuchi wagged a finger in Grimmjow’s face. “Then all will be taken care of.”

Grimmjow wished to bite that finger off.

That Hollow was _his_. His opponent, his mark. Kurotsuchi was a gutless scavenger in the field of Grimmjow’s battle.

But Captain-Commander himself had ordered this. The best Grimmjow could hope for now was to get a good fight in before the cage came into play.

It was an utterly unsatisfying compromise.

The morning of the mission saw Grimmjow awake before the sun.

He did not often wake so early, but his heart would not be still, not even in sleep, so he rose and donned his uniform—sleeveless robes and white captain’s haori, sword at his hip—and meditated in communion with Pantera until it was time.

The Senkaimon courtyard was bustling with people, but quiet like a graveyard. Three combat squads representing the second, ninth, and tenth divisions stood in formation before the gate. Members of the Kidō Corps stood at either side of the Senkaimon itself, and a handful of twelfth division members gathered in the back, with Kurotsuchi Mayuri among them.

Grimmjow took his place at the head of his squad, and his men dipped their heads to him as he passed.

Grimmjow had no mind for any of them. His thoughts and gaze were turned forwards, towards the Senkaimon, towards the desert world of Hueco Mundo and the yellow-eyed beast whose mark lingered across his chest.

Captain-Commander Yamamoto addressed them.

“This is a mission of utmost importance. Your primary objective is to neutralize and capture the white Hollow.”

Grimmjow closed his eyes. He could almost taste the burn of that black fire reiatsu in the back of his throat.

“Your secondary objective is to disperse the Hollow congregation, by whatever means necessary. You will follow the plans laid out for you in the mission brief. But, failing that, this mission may turn to melee combat. The Kidō Corps will guard the Senkaimon—”

Pantera’s hilt rested familiar and comfortable against Grimmjow’s palm, and her spirit whispered hunger.

“—and should the order to retreat be made, you will disengage immediately and retreat as one. Make haste and do not straggle. The Senkaimon will hold for no one.”

The gates parted.

Grimmjow opened his eyes, and the breaths of many men paused at his back. He stepped forward, and they followed behind.

The white light within the Senkaimon folded around them.

…

As the Devil’s Altar came into view, Kurotsuchi and the twelfth fell back to lay down the anchoring points of the Four-Way Binding Harness.

Grimmjow led his division onwards.

The teeming masses of Hollows surrounding the spire had not diminished, and the nervous energy of the men at Grimmjow’s back turned to cold stillness as the magnitude of the situation sank in. This was far beyond what any of them had witnessed before. With the size of this infestation, a dimensional rip and the ensuing spillover were not a possibility—it was a _certainty_.

Grimmjow halted atop the crest of a sand dune within sight of the Devil’s Altar. The second and tenth divisions, led by Hitsugaya Toshirō and Suì-Fēng, continued forward. Their focus was to disperse the Hollows; Grimmjow’s division had a single Hollow as their objective.

“What now, Captain?”

Grimmjow looked down into the masses and searched for the white Hollow’s long mane of orange hair, but amongst endless seas of black Hollows with white masks, he found nothing. So he closed his eyes instead, and cast out his senses for its reiatsu.

It was everywhere.

The air, the sky, the sand and barren trees and every meter that Grimmjow could stretch his perception over was saturated with White’s lingering reiatsu. It was not that the Onmitsukidō could not _find_ it, Grimmjow realized with dawning awe. It was that White’s reiatsu permeated _everything._

As if it claimed dominion over this land.

Grimmjow opened his eyes. His heart pounded against his ribs. “It is here.”

His men drew their swords in answer, and Grimmjow too fingered Pantera’s hilt. It was here, but _where_?

Last time, it had found Grimmjow on its own, appearing before him unprovoked, unsummoned. This time, Grimmjow had not the patience for it to simply stumble upon him. He flexed his reiatsu, pushing a gentle swell of it up and outwards in all directions.

His officers went stiff.

“Captain! Are you sure that is wise—”

“On your guard!” Hisagi Shūhei shouted. “It will have felt that.”

Idiots. What were they so shy of? Weren’t they here to confront the white Hollow, after all?

Grimmjow looked around. The second and tenth divisions had already engaged the Hollow swarm. The twelfth was nowhere in sight—doubtless they were hidden near the site of the trap. Grimmjow had memorized the precise spot the anchors of the Four-Way Binding Harness were concealed.

Kurotsuchi was probably damn near giddy with glee, the creepy little—

The white Hollow stood before Grimmjow.

Grimmjow brought his sword up, and it was instinct not conscious thought that moved his body. In the next instant, his bones rattled with the force of the white Hollow’s sword clashing against his own. His division officers were even slower to react; they shouted in alarm only at the second crossing of their swords.

He pushed back.

The first time, Grimmjow had been caught entirely off guard by the white Hollow’s speed, its power, its very _existence_. This time, he was ready. He had spent weeks in idle preparation for this very moment, imagining in his mind over and over again how their swords might meet once more.

And what a meeting it was.

Grimmjow forgot about his men. He forgot Kurotsuchi’s cage, forgot the swarm of Hollows at their back, forgot even Yamamoto’s orders and the very purpose of this mission. Nothing existed to him but Pantera in his hands, the stunning black sword striking against her, and the white Hollow who wielded it.

Grimmjow was _alive_.

He scarcely felt the first kiss of that black blade across his shoulder, but when Pantera drew her first blood it was by a wide swing that splattered the Hollow’s blood in an arc across Grimmjow’s face. He felt the hot splash of blood in his open mouth, tasted that black fire reiatsu like smoke in the back of his throat, and laughed his joy to the sky.

The Hollow leapt back—Grimmjow did the same.

The Hollow bled bright red. Grimmjow wasn’t sure why this surprised him, but he had not expected something so mundane from this creature.

At a distance of several meters apart, Grimmjow stood tall, yanked open the front of his robes and jerked a thumb at his chest, where the thick scar snaked all the way down his front. “Oi, Hollow! I kept your mark.”

The Hollow’s lizard-yellow eyes followed the path of Grimmjow’s scar from his collar across his chest, down under his shihakusho out of sight. Grimmjow wondered what expression it wore beneath that white bone mask.

“You like it?” Grimmjow barked, and his smile glinted as sharp as his blade. “Let’s give you one too.”

He charged.

The Hollow met him unflinching, and their collision was of more than blades; their reiatsu flared against each other, red-black fire bearing down on Grimmjow’s blue—and Grimmjow’s focus narrowed to those yellow eyes boring into him once more.

He hated those fucking eyes.

“Hadō number four.” Grimmjow pointed at one of those infernal yellow eyes with his finger, and imagined a bloody red hole in its place. “ _Byakurai._ ”

The Hollow flinched just in time for the bolt of white lightning kidō to miss him by a hair’s width. Then it twisted back around, opened its great white jaws—the inside of its mouth was bottomless black—and closed down on Grimmjow’s shoulder.

It was as though that hadō spell had arched back around and struck Grimmjow instead—shock and pain rooted him to the spot. He tried to retreat, but two rows of jagged teeth gripped him tight. His flesh tore.

He could not pull back. Nor could he push forward, lest he gore himself on those great white horns pressed to his throat.

Grimmjow’s vision turned to red.

He would not be so easily pinned down, made helpless, held still to anyone’s mercy—how _dare_ this fucking Hollow hold him so?

“ _Grind, Pantera!_ ”

Pantera reformed upon his forearms. The Hollow released him and leapt back, but not before Grimmjow caught him across the collar with the curved blade on his right arm. The Hollow’s reflexes were flawless. An instant later, and that wound on its collar could have opened its throat instead.

A Shinigami charged at the Hollow’s back with raised sword and a roar—twentieth seat Umesada Toshimori had never been one for subtlety—but the Hollow did not turn, did not budge its focus from Grimmjow. Umesada’s blade struck the Hollow across the spine, but there was no blood, not even a wound.

Umesada gaped; he raised his blade again, but the second strike did not cut either.

“Damn you!” he cursed. “Why won’t you bleed?”

The third strike did not fall; the Hollow caught the blade in its hand and tightened its fist. The sword shattered like glass, and Umesada shrank back, stammering denial.

Once he regained his senses, he ran towards Grimmjow, still holding his useless broken blade. “Captain!”

 _Crack!_ Grimmjow’s backhand sent him flying back towards the Hollow’s feet. “Who told you to interrupt my fight?”

Useless _fuck_! Grimmjow tolerated the presence of weaklings only if they didn’t get in his way, and for this trash to dare insert himself in _his_ fight—

The Hollow stepped over the hapless Shinigami with not even a passing glance. It was equally unmoved by their audience of Grimmjow’s men. And why should it be? Its reiatsu pressed upon all like a great tide of the seas, while theirs were mere puddles.

In the blink of an eye, the Hollow was at his throat. The white teeth of its mask were stained with Grimmjow’s blood—it opened those fearsome jaws once more—Grimmjow shielded himself with his left arm and the jaws snapped shut across his arm blade instead of his throat.

Pantera did not shatter so easily, but Grimmjow was stunned for a moment. He tried to slash with the blade between the Hollow’s teeth with intent to slice its jaw clean off its face, but the monster clenched tighter. Grimmjow was accustomed to all sounds of battle—steel on steel, the rending of flesh, the snap of bone and splatter of blood—but the grating of teeth on steel was one he had not known.

Grimmjow was immobilized by the very arm he had meant to defend himself with.

The Hollow raised its black sword.

“Hadō number sixty-three—” Hisagi Shūhei appeared to Grimmjow’s left. “ _Raikōhō_!”

Yellow lightning arched towards the Hollow. It struck it in the chest and exploded. In the ensuing smoke which obscured all vision, Grimmjow felt the grip on his left arm go lax. He pulled himself free and slashed where he judged the Hollow must be. His blade fell on empty air.

He blinked, and on instinct turned to block the sword coming down at his back with both arms.

“Captain, remember the mission!” Hisagi shouted.

Grimmjow almost didn’t hear him—his ears were filled with the sound of his own blood roaring, Pantera’s wild delight, the clash of steel as he met the Hollow blow for blow—but Hisagi’s words lingered until he had the mind to understand.

The mission.

The trap.

He was meant to lure the Hollow into Kurotsuchi’s Four-Way Binding Harness.

It was the purpose of this entire mission; the primary objective was to capture and neutralize White. For a moment Grimmjow considered ignoring it. He finally had what he wanted: he was crossing swords with White, spilling its blood and having his own spilt in return, and what greater joy was there than this?

Reality crashed down on him like a shock of cold water.

If his insubordination was the reason this mission failed, there would be consequences. The Hollow swarm would rip dimensions and the spillover event would devastate the living world. Yamamoto might even strip Grimmjow of his captaincy.

He swallowed bitterness.

Their battle had already carried them closer to the hidden Four-Way Binding Harness. With dragging reluctance, Grimmjow leapt back and took a flash step towards the trap, and White followed at his heels. The static boom of sonído haunted Grimmjow’s steps.

White was fast. Grimmjow was not yet at his limit for shunpo, but he suspected White had an even greater speed reserve. He stopped, and White brought its sword crashing down upon Grimmjow’s raised blades.

A short burst of swordplay followed which left Grimmjow’s blood singing, and then he broke their sword lock once more and continued towards the trap.

The site was finally in view. It appeared deserted, but no doubt Kurotsuchi and the twelfth division were hidden from sight somewhere nearby.

The barren tree there marked ten paces from one anchored corner of the trap; the other three anchors lay each two meters apart. Grimmjow traced the boundaries of the trap with his mind and halted just outside the invisible square.

White stopped also, just beyond the border on the opposite side.

It was so close. Two steps forward, and the binding incantation could begin. Wherever he was hidden, Kurotsuchi was surely salivating with anticipation.

White took a step forward, and joy fled Grimmjow’s heart. Pantera, which had been alight with life and warmth throughout their battle, felt suddenly cold. The invisible line in the sand which marked the perimeter of the Four-Way Binding Harness lay mere inches from the Hollow’s feet.

Just one more step.

Grimmjow wavered. He could lead it astray. Wherever he went, the Hollow would follow, he was certain of that now. Whatever madness had seized him these weeks past and driven him to single-minded thoughts of White, he had not suffered alone.

The Hollow was stricken by that same madness. White would chase him to the ends of the world.

Grimmjow’s feet were leaden weights. He had only to take a single flash step away, the Hollow would give chase, and the mission would fail.

One step closer, and White would belong to the Shinigami.

The span of a single heartbeat seemed to stretch to eternity. White’s eyes were on Grimmjow once more—yellow like a beast’s, but intelligent, maddening in their keenness—Grimmjow’s breath caught in his throat and did not escape.

A mantra began in Grimmjow’s mind, a whisper he could not hear but whose urgency he understood. He bit his tongue so that the words did not mirror on his lips.

Just one more step…

White seized in place, and it turned its head to the side, listening, smelling, _sensing_ something Grimmjow could not perceive. Its gaze flicked back to Grimmjow for just a brief moment and then it was simply _gone_ , the soft _boom_ of sonído announcing its departure.

Grimmjow almost stumbled. He stared at the place White had been, just inches from the boundary of the trap.

His breath began anew and the weight on his chest lifted. He heard now the mantra in his head, and the muffled words now took shape.

_Turn back. Get away._

Somehow, White had taken heed.

Kurotsuchi Mayuri appeared behind a veil of shimmering kidō to Grimmjow’s right, and his reiatsu prickled like static electricity in the air. “What happened?” he demanded, with his hands thrown up. “It was so close!”

Grimmjow didn’t know. The mission had failed, yet he could summon neither disappointment nor regret.

“What did you do, Jaegerjaquez?” Kurotsuchi turned on him with narrowed eyes, and this time, Grimmjow curled his lip and snarled back.

“Nothing. I did my part. You didn’t hide well enough. He felt you, or the trap.”

Nemu appeared, followed by the rest of the twelfth.

“Mayuri-sama, we must retreat now.”

In the distance, the second and tenth divisions were beating a hasty retreat towards the Senkaimon. At their back were great swarms of Hollows beyond numbering.

Grimmjow sheathed his sword and signaled to his men. _Disengage immediately and retreat as one_ , Yamamoto had commanded. Any stragglers would be stranded, for the gate to return could not be held and risk invasion of Seireitei.

They made for the Senkaimon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incantations for the Four-Way Binding Harness are lines from classical Chinese poetry 天问 or "Questions to Heaven"


	3. The Fall

“Something Jaegerjaquez did must have tipped it off!”

The tension in the captain meeting rivaled that of the Senkaimon courtyard before the mission. With the fourth division full of wounded and neither the primary nor secondary objectives fulfilled, the operation to the Devil’s Altar had been a complete failure. Kurotsuchi Mayuri had not stopped seething since their return, and he now had one bone-white finger pointed at Grimmjow.

“ _Tch_.” Grimmjow sneered. “Don’t blame your shortcomings on me. That Hollow sensed something. You didn’t hide yourself or the trap well enough, you stupid fuck.”

Unlike Kurotsuchi though, his foul mood was for show. His blood was _singing_. Grimmjow was still wearing the blood of his recent battle with White _._ His white captain haori was stained red from both of them, and Grimmjow fingered the ruined fabric appreciatively. He wondered how long he might get away with wearing it like this, before some busybody wrote a formal complaint.

“Stop _fondling_ your bloody haori, Captain Jaegerjaquez.” Hitsugaya Toshiro folded his arms. “This is a serious situation. We failed not only in dispersing the Hollows, but also in capturing White. We are running out of time.”

“Captain Kurotsuchi, your estimates for a spillover event?”

Still scowling, Kurotsuchi tucked his hands in his robes. “As things are now, probability of a category A spillover event hovers at ten to fifteen percent daily, but that will rise exponentially. In two weeks, it will be at forty percent. By the end of the month, there will be a ninety-nine percent likelihood of a catastrophic spillover. And this is to assume the size of Hollow presence does not grow.”

There was a long moment of sober silence to answer this, before Yamamoto spoke again.

“Is there reason to believe Captain Jaegerjaquez did not in good faith attempt to uphold his end of the mission objective?”

Grimmjow smirked. He had led White almost right into Kurotsuchi’s hands, delivered on a silver fucking platter. That at least could not be disputed.

“…No.” The admission dragged out of Kurotsuchi like a tooth being pulled.

“Then Captain Jaegerjaquez’ assertion that your disguise was compromised is reasonable.”

Kurotsuchi looked like he had swallowed a lemon. “It is…highly unlikely, but perhaps… _possible_.”

Yamamoto considered this. “Then use these next days to refine and perfect your technique—”

Grimmjow could hear Kurotsuchi’s teeth grinding from here. He decided he rather liked the sound of it.

“—and make what modifications are needed. Captains, we will reconvene tomorrow morning. Have your reports written and delivered by tonight. We must begin making preparations for another mission into Hueco Mundo.”

With that, the captains took their leave.

“Captain Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.”

Grimmjow stopped and looked over his shoulder. Yamamoto eyed the blood on his coattail with a tight frown.

“Wash your haori.”

…

The next three days saw all of the Gotei in a frenzy.

The second and tenth divisions had suffered a handful of casualties and a far greater number of incapacitating injuries in the last mission; in answer, Yamamoto had ordered the mobilization of the remaining divisions in the upcoming mission.

The training fields were occupied day and night with people honing their skills, with seated officers taking the reins in organizing training exercises and rehearsing battle plans with the rank and file.

Grimmjow was summoned somewhere nearly every hour of the day, either for an audience with Yamamoto and the captains and lieutenants to discuss the upcoming mission, or with Kurotsuchi to rehearse the capture of the white Hollow. Grimmjow enjoyed none of it, and it was only the promise of crossing swords with White again in three days’ time that kept him looking forward.

Kurotsuchi tinkered with his trap to no end—first he removed one of the four anchor points, then he added another to make five, and finally he settled back on four.

“It is the strongest number for binding and sealing kidō, after all,” he muttered aloud, mostly to himself, for Grimmjow had neither asked for nor wanted to hear an explanation into the finer points of theoretical kidō manipulation and spell casting. “ _Kurohitsugi_ and _Kin_ are also four-way spells. The equidistant distribution of energy with a square shape comes second only to a circular shape with infinite anchor points. But perhaps a fifth point as a lynchpin…but no, it would have to be perfectly balanced—”

“We rehearsing or you just gonna keep yapping to yourself?” Grimmjow slouched with his hands in his pockets and kicked at a scuff in the floor with the toe of his sandal.

“Hmph.” Kurotsuchi narrowed his eyes at Grimmjow. “I wouldn’t expect _you_ to appreciate the finer points of kidō manipulation.”

True. Grimmjow excelled in the destructive hadō spells, but he had nearly failed every other kidō discipline in his Academy days.

Kurotsuchi’s disdain was for more than Grimmjow’s ignorance in kidō, though. He didn’t voice it, but Grimmjow knew his suspicions lingered that he had somehow sabotaged White’s capture.

Grimmjow had done nothing out of line in that regard, and yet…Kurotsuchi’s instincts were keen. He _had_ wanted White to evade capture. A captive White, fettered and suppressed, did not interest Grimmjow. For a Hollow to reach such level of power meant it had struggled its way to the top of a vicious, merciless food chain, and Grimmjow could respect the will and tenacity such a predator must possess.

Why shackle such a magnificent creature?

If it was amassing an army, if it achieved what the Gotei feared and ripped the dimensional barrier, if it led its Hollows into an outright invasion of the living world or even of Soul Society—was this not the natural order? Was it not its right to do so, by virtue of its strength alone?

But Grimmjow’s views were shared by few others among the Gotei.

He turned to Kurotsuchi, the gutless scientist with his endless trickery and manipulations, and sneered. Perhaps Grimmjow knew nothing of kidō, but what could Kurotsuchi Mayuri understand of strength?

“You have something to say to me, Jaegerjaquez?”

“Yeah.” Grimmjow said. “What will you do when the Hollow breaks out of your shitty cage?”

With a roll of his eyes, Kurotsuchi waved his hand and dismissed him. “You haven’t paid attention to a single thing I’ve said. The Four-Way Binding Harness cannot be broken like a traditional kidō spell. Its incantation and spellwork create a flexible barrier. It can bend and stretch, but it will not break.”

Kurotsuchi was a fool. There was not a thing in this world that did not fall to great power, and some fancy kidō spell was no exception.

Grimmjow hoped he was there to see it happen.

...

No trace of blood remained on Grimmjow’s haori.

The freshly laundered coat was delivered to his door the morning before the upcoming mission, and Grimmjow held it up to inspect with a frown. All the tears had been repaired, and it was as crispy white as the day Grimmjow had first received it. It was as though his last fight with White had never happened at all.

At least he still had a souvenir from their first fight.

His new scar had attracted some attention from the rank and file, and it had set off a flurry of rumors that Grimmjow did not care to listen for, but which reached his ears anyways.

Some were ridiculous—that he’d been forced to keep the scar on order of Captain-Commander Yamamoto as punishment for disregarding orders on the mission—but most at least got it right that the scar had come from a fearsome Hollow who was at the center of the chaos at the Devil’s Altar.

When he was not with Kurotsuchi or in meetings about the upcoming mission, Grimmjow was faced with a daunting stack of papers that seemed to grow by the hour on his desk. News of the Devil’s Altar had reached Central 46, and the useless pencil-pushers there now demanded Grimmjow to record in writing _everything_ that was possible to write about the situation there, and especially about White.

“I’ll write their _fucking obituaries_ next,” he growled to his empty office late that evening.

After a full day in and out of battle planning and in the twelfth division’s fucking basement watching Kurotsuchi fiddle with the Four-Way Binding Harness, Grimmjow itched to blow off some steam in the training field, not slave away over paperwork until his hand cramped around a pen.

Ink pooled down the tip of his pen into a black bead which hovered, fat and glistening, over the surface of a blank report form.

They wanted him to describe White. Hadn’t he already done that in his last mission report? How many different ways did they want him to say the _same fucking thing_?

The bead of ink dropped and feathered over the surface of the page.

Grimmjow tossed the pen aside, gathered up the entire stack of papers, and set it ablaze with a wordless fire kidō. Ash snowed down onto his desk.

There. It was taken care of.

And he still had time to make it out to the training fields.

...

The third mission to the Devil’s Altar was larger than any other in many years. Grimmjow did not remember the last time half of the Gotei’s thirteen captains had been present in a single mission. Yamamoto had assigned two other divisions to join those already familiar with the Devil’s Altar. Fifth division captain Aizen Sōsuke had volunteered his division, and following his lead, so had third division captain Ichimaru Gin. Kenpachi Zaraki, captain of the eleventh division, had been soundly denied.

Grimmjow couldn’t blame them. Who wouldn’t want a look at the white Hollow that had caused so much unrest among the Gotei?

But the strategy had changed. Grimmjow was to only draw White into the open. The other captains would engage the Hollow, subdue it, and then Kurotsuchi would step in with the Four-Way Binding Harness. Grimmjow was to remain on standby. As _bait_.

It was downright insulting.

“Captain Jaegerjaquez, your part is as vital as any other.”

Grimmjow didn’t recall asking for Aizen Sōsuke’s opinion or comfort, and Aizen had misread his discontent. Grimmjow’s mark had been snatched right out from under him more than once. First it had been Kurotsuchi, and now, he was not even permitted to engage the Hollow?

What a fucking joke.

“ _Tch_.”

By wordless gestures, Grimmjow directed his men to join the other divisions under the leadership of the lieutenants. When the captains were engaged with White, it would be up to the lieutenants to lead the attacks against the Hollow swarms.

“Be careful, Captain Jaegerjaquez,” said Aizen, and the stark concern on his bespectacled face annoyed Grimmjow. He didn’t need anyone clucking after him like a mother hen, least of all the mild-mannered captain of the fifth. “You have come through two battles with that Hollow, but it may still come after you in earnest this time.”

“ _Hn_.”

White was still too much of an unknown to be considered predictable, that was true. But the twist in Grimmjow’s gut, which had been present ever since he had woken up this morning, clenched ever deeper now.

White had held its own against two captains of the Gotei. But against six? If it showed up this time, it would belong to the Shinigami by nightfall.

Kurotsuchi and the twelfth had already concealed themselves and laid the trap. The remaining captains—Hitsugaya, Suì-Fēng, Aizen, Ichimaru—waited at Grimmjow’s side as their lieutenants led their divisions onwards towards the marble-white spire of the Devil’s Altar.

“Captain Jaegerjaquez,” said Hitsugaya. “When we receive the signal from the lieutenants that they have initiated their mission plan, you will flare your reiatsu to attract the white Hollow to us.”

“Let’s get into position.” Suì-Fēng narrowed her eyes at Grimmjow. “You will _not engage_ the white Hollow this time, Jaegerjaquez. You will leave it to us, and—”

_Boom._

Long orange hair filled the vision of Grimmjow’s periphery. He had Pantera in hand and drawn by instinct, and not a moment too soon as White’s blade came crashing down towards his head.

“It’s here!” Hitsugaya shouted.

Over the crossing of their blades, Grimmjow met eyes with White. Its jaws were slightly parted, two rows of jagged fangs primed to bite, its face so close that Grimmjow could count every divot and scratch in that fearsome white mask.

It was not the chill of Hitsugaya’s released Hyōrinmaru which raised the hair on Grimmjow’s neck, but the white Hollow’s warm breath upon his face.

Grimmjow fended him off with wild lunge and leapt back. He laid his fingers upon the flat of Pantera’s blade. “ _Grind_ , Pan—”

White was back in his face, sword coming down at him again, and Grimmjow aborted Pantera’s release to block the assault.

 _Shit!_ Had the Hollow done that on purpose?

“ _Shoot to kill,_ Shinsō.”

White’s focus turned to the flash of Ichimaru’s zanpakutō. Grimmjow leapt out of its way as the blade’s formidable extension sent the Hollow flying back. Grimmjow wielded neither blade in that clash of steel, yet he still felt the jarring in his arms as though he did.

Ichimaru Gin’s smiling face did not waver as he swung his extended blade. The Hollow blocked it, forced it back with a flare of reiatsu tightly coiled around its sword, and then suddenly Shinsō had retracted to its wakizashi shape. Ichimaru tilted his head to one side, and this was the only warning given before he met the Hollow in mid-air.

Ichimaru swung his sword impossibly fast, one strike after the other, relentless and savage in an unforgiving tide of assault crashing down from all sides. But the Hollow parried them all, and after just a few moments, went on the offensive. It pushed back against Ichimaru, and when the captain switched his stance to extend Shinsō once more, White leapt to the side and swung at his undefended side.

Just as Grimmjow had done, Ichimaru aborted his attack to defend himself.

“My my, what sharp instincts you have, Hollow-san.” Ichimaru opened one pale eye at the Hollow. “But you shouldn’t focus all on me.”

A dragon of blue ice shot towards White from behind. White held out a hand, the one not holding its sword against Ichimaru, and charged a ball of black-red reiatsu from its fist. It exploded towards Hitsugaya’s Hyōrinmaru, and Grimmjow tasted that burning reiatsu in his throat as ice fragments shattered over them all.

The speed of the attack gave it away as a Bala, but the sheer power of it, the destructive power to shatter Hitsugaya’s bankai in a single hit, was more like a Cero.

What was an actual Cero from this monster capable of?

Grimmjow nearly missed Ichimaru’s next move. Ichimaru took advantage of the plume of vaporized ice to shoot Shinsō out again at White, and this time he caught the Hollow along the flank. Bright red stood out stark against bone-white skin, and something hot and rancorous flashed in Grimmjow’s chest.

That was _his_ prey.

Ichimaru had no right. Hitsugaya, Kurotsuchi, Suì-Fēng—none of them had the right to poach what belonged to Grimmjow. He released Pantera, and the blade took its place upon his arms. Suì-Fēng spun on him.

“No, Jaegerjaquez! You have orders—”

Fuck the orders. Fuck the mission. If the Gotei was so weak they could not with the combined efforts of _six_ captains contain a single Hollow, then that Hollow deserved its army and whatever it intended to do with it.

White took notice of him immediately. It turned, casting Ichimaru and Hitsugaya both to the side as though they were mere afterthoughts, and came for Grimmjow.

Grimmjow raced to meet it.

Suì-Fēng appeared between them, her back to Grimmjow, Suzumebachi released upon her hand. She had shed her captain haori, and the bare skin of her back and arms were alight with kidō. She dropped to a crouch and, fast as lightning, dealt the Hollow a kick to the gut, and then one-two punches to its chest in quick succession.

“Hadō number seventy-three. _Sōren sōkatsui_.” Aizen’s electric-blue hadō spell caught the Hollow in the back, and then his sword swept towards White’s head.

_Crash!_

White stopped the blow with its black blade. Its eyes narrowed on Aizen, and Grimmjow _sensed_ its aggression like a physical pressure on his skin in the split second before the Hollow unleased it upon Aizen.

Aizen’s face was slack, his lips parted and his eyes wide—Grimmjow had never seen such a look upon his face before—as the Hollow focused a relentless barrage upon him, its sword-bearing arm a blur of white clasping black, the crash of steel on steel falling in such quick succession the sound was more like a continuous grating pitch than a sequence of notes.

Shinsō shot forward in a flash of deadly white, the Hollow sidestepped it with a _boom_ of sonído and resumed its assault on Aizen without missing a beat. Hitsugaya and then Suì-Fēng joined the fray, and Grimmjow’s blood boiled in frustrated impotence.

Four on one. How long could White keep this up?

Above the Devil’s Altar, a ripple flexed the air, and the sky tore open like a canvas. Pitch black yawned beyond.

As one, the captains looked upward with wide eyes.

Hitsugaya was the first to react. “Garganta!” He shouted into his communicator. “Division ten, disengage the Hollows! Seal that rip before it tears bigger!”

_“Yes, Captain!”_

Already, the lesser Hollows below had sensed the tear in the dimensional barrier, and were turning now in great black swarms towards the Garganta. If they reached it, the spillover would begin.

“Division two, Ōmaeda, assist the tenth division! Stop the Hollows from reaching the Garganta—”

The white Hollow charged Suì-Fēng, and her communicator dropped from her hand. Hitsugaya blocked its blade from slicing her from neck to waist, then turned his attack on it. Shinsō flashed white and deadly—Aizen disappeared in a flash step only to reappear at White’s back with his sword raised—Suì-Fēng weaved in and out of the melee with the wild lightning of her Shunko charged upon her arms.

It was chaos.

Attacks rained down on White from four sides, and not all were parried. When White broke free, he was bleeding from more than just his flank now.

But so too were the captains. Hitsugaya was breathing heavily, his pale hair red on one side. Ichimaru’s white captain coat fluttered torn and bloody across his back.

White raised its head, and its yellow eyes found Grimmjow across the distance.

For an instant, time stood still. The air seized in Grimmjow’s lungs. Blood rushed in his ears, yet all was silent and calm. White was bloodied, but stood tall as though it had taken no damage at all.

Grimmjow did not blink, for if he did, he might miss—

_Boom._

Lurid yellow eyes stared up at Grimmjow. The Hollow crouched low, scarcely a foot in front of him, and its long leg slammed up into Grimmjow’s gut.

White desert sand and black sky flew past Grimmjow as he spat sour bile. He threw out his arms, Pantera shifting to claws on his fingers, and scrabbled for purchase. When he had righted himself once more, he had barely enough time to replace the air that had been kicked out of him before White was suddenly at his elbow with claws coming at Grimmjow’s face.

With a wild grin, Grimmjow twisted around and lashed out with claws of his own. His claws found their mark in the white bone mask and gouged three long marks from the Hollow’s temple to its jaw.

Grimmjow laughed.

The Hollow had surprised him. Grimmjow had expected another attack from that black zanpakutō, and instead the Hollow had caught him off guard with hand-to-hand.

Grimmjow’s eyes were wide, but his smile was even wider. “Tell me your name, Hollow!” he howled.

He had to know. A creature like this deserved to be known by name. Grimmjow wasn’t fooled by its muteness—it was intelligent, it could speak, and it most certainly had a name.

Yellow eyes crinkled at the corners. Beneath that white mask, the Hollow was smiling back at him.

It hefted its sword and came at him once more—Grimmjow readied himself—

Ichimaru attacked from the right, Suì-Fēng from the left, and the Hollow stopped short by the cage of their swords barring him from Grimmjow.

It opened its mouth and _screamed_ , and the sound of it, a terrible beastly roar that echoed in tremors underfoot and in the air, felt cathartic for Grimmjow’s own frustration. White wanted Grimmjow alone as dearly as Grimmjow wanted it in return. Their fight was a dance not permitted to flourish, with White pulled four other ways and Grimmjow forbidden from taking part.

It was maddening.

The Hollow backed up, dropped to a crouch, and dipped its head with its great white horns jutting forward. Black-red reiatsu coalesced between the tips of those horns, swirling in a chaotic sphere that grew bigger and bigger.

This was not the instant charge-and-fire of a Bala. The realization struck Grimmjow like lightning, and he flash stepped out of the way on instinct. This was—

“ _Cero!_ Run!” Suì-Fēng followed Grimmjow’s lead and flash stepped towards safety.

The power of the charging cero begged to be released; tendrils of reiatsu escaped from its surface like flares from a miniature sun, and again on instinct, Grimmjow gathered his own reiatsu around him in defensive armor and took another flash step back. And then—

Everything turned to white, and the world went silent. Grimmjow was blind and deaf. He opened his mouth, but he could not hear his own voice when he shouted.

Fire licked his skin, the burn dampened by the barrier of his defensive reiatsu. His lips cracked, his mouth dried as the taste of White’s monstrous reiatsu filled his throat, his lungs, his gut.

Were his eyes open or closed? Was he screaming? Grimmjow did not know. The only thing he was sure of was Pantera—she had fallen out of shikai, and he clutched her hilt like a lifeline. He thought he might be flying, for he felt no solid ground beneath his feet, but he could not tell if the wind on his skin was by the force of him being thrown or from the fallout of that apocalyptic Cero.

He slammed into something hard, it splintered and broke beneath the impact, and he kept going. A moment later, he struck something with more give and glanced across the surface like a pebble skipping across a pond before he came to a stop.

The blinding white receded slowly, and Grimmjow realized his eyes were closed after all. He opened them in a squint, and the darkness of Hueco Mundo’s night sky came back into focus. Coughing sand, he rolled over and climbed to his feet. He ached all over.

Where was he? Where was the white Hollow? The other captains? Grimmjow cast about, searching for the striking white spire of the Devil’s Altar to orient himself, and found nothing. They had been close to the Altar. Could the Cero have blown him away so far that it was no longer in sight?

But then Grimmjow saw the black void of the Garganta in the distance above, perhaps no more than a half mile away, and looked beneath it.

The Devil’s Altar was _gone_. The scorch mark in its place was like a great black scar in the earth, trailing at least a mile long before it disappeared out of sight. It cut a wide swath through the sea of Hollows that had swarmed the base of the spire, and the survivors now scattered in every direction. The Hollow swarm had been devastated; where once their collective reiatsu had weighed on Grimmjow’s skin like the oppressive atmosphere of an impending storm, now it barely registered as more than a light prickle.

The devastation of it seized Grimmjow’s breath and held his gaze captive.

So _this_ was White’s Cero.

What the hell were they playing at?

They couldn’t capture this Hollow. It had seemed likely before, or at least a _possibility_ , that they might succeed in this, but Grimmjow knew now it was nothing more than a fool’s dream. With old man Yama, they might stand a chance. But not like this, not today.

Cautiously, he advanced. He kept an eye out for the other captains. Had any of them been caught in the blast? But then he glimpsed a small figure flitting towards the same destination—Suì-Fēng—and then Ichimaru and Aizen approaching from his distant right as well. Hitsugaya descended from above and touched down onto the ground on Grimmjow’s left.

White was nowhere to be seen.

The captains met a few hundred meters from the base of what had once been the Devil’s Altar. They were alive, but not unscathed. Ichimaru’s right sleeve was gone, and his arm was charred from shoulder to wrist. He braced it gingerly against his side. Suì-Fēng and Hitsugaya were both bleeding.

Grimmjow looked down at himself. The coattails of his haori as well as the ends of his hakama, which had not been encased by his defensive reiatsu, were incinerated. He had not even been in the path of the Cero.

The mood was solemn.

Hitsugaya was first to speak. He pulled out his communicator. “Matsumoto. Report on status.”

Nothing answered him but static. Hitsugaya grimaced and looked upwards towards the Garganta, which was surrounded by Shinigami still working to seal the dimensional rip.

“The reiatsu from that Cero must have scrambled our communicators.”

“We are done.” Suì-Fēng sheathed her sword. “Let’s send up a kidō flare and get out of here.”

They were all thinking the same. Their primary mission objective had again failed. They were not going to capture White today, that much was clear now. But the secondary objective…

The Devil’s Altar was gone. At least half of the Hollows congregating around it had been wiped out by that devastating Cero, and the rest were dispersing in a panic. The dimensional rip was being repaired; already it looked half the size it had been before. The immediate threat of a spillover event was, for the moment, abated.

“Hollow-san did our job for us,” said Ichimaru. “How helpful of him. Don’t you think…Captain Aizen?”

“Indeed.”

Aizen had barely spoken a word since the start of the mission. He appeared unharmed, and even his robes looked more or less in order. Only his usually tidy hair was messy, and his glasses were smudged. His face was composed, yet as he stood staring at the remains of the Devil’s Altar, there seemed an undercurrent of something less than calm beneath the surface.

Grimmjow’s skin prickled.

With a hand raised to the sky, Aizen shot off a red flare kidō to signal the lieutenants and the rest of their men in the distance.

The flare rose, casting a trail of red smoke high into the air, and all who saw it knew what it meant.

The mission was over.

…

In the days following, the Gotei breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Continued monitoring of the site where the Devil’s Altar had once stood demonstrated the Hollow activity in the vicinity had dropped down to ambient levels by the following day. Spillover was no longer imminent.

A catastrophe had been avoided.

“It’s not over.”

It was an hour after sunset, and the courtyard was full of people coming off duty to enjoy dinner outdoors in the mild spring evening. The air was alive with ambient chatter and laughter, in a lighthearted atmosphere not felt in weeks since that first mission to the Devil’s Altar.

Grimmjow leaned back and kicked his feet up, but he said nothing. Kyōraku was right, of course. It wasn’t over. White was still out there, and old man Yama was like a bloodhound with a scent. He was probably already strategizing their next attempt to capture the white Hollow.

“Won’t be over ’til that Hollow’s dead or captured,” said Grimmjow.

Central 46 was involved now too, and they demanded the same. Grimmjow didn’t understand it. Why hunt down a creature for the simple crime of existing? What was so wrong with leaving something magnificent and unexplainable to exist in the world? When Grimmjow thought of an unfathomably powerful Hollow living, breathing, heart beating somewhere out there in the vast desolate sands of Hueco Mundo, he was filled with awe.

Central 46 would prefer it to be snuffed out.

Kyōraku smiled. A plum blossom, delicate and white like a drop of snow, drifted close to his hand. He caught it in his palm and took in its strong fragrance before dropping it into his tea. “You sound displeased, Grimmjow-san.”

Ever since his return from Hueco Mundo, Grimmjow had been filled with restless angst like an itch beneath his skin he could not scratch. It lingered at all hours, present when he woke, persistent through the day, and unbearable when he lay in his bed awake at night. He found his hand resting on Pantera’s hilt even when he had no need or mind for his blade. Pantera too was restless; she prowled the edges of Grimmjow’s consciousness in the early morning or late at night when his mind drifted between wakefulness and sleep.

He knew the cause. His last encounter with White had been utterly unsatisfying. Pantera seethed that she had been robbed of her chance to know that black zanpakutō.

“Do you know why that place was called the Devil’s Altar?”

Grimmjow turned. “No.”

“I suppose you are too young to know the old stories.” Kyōraku was looking down into his tea cup, and his straw hat shaded his face. “Before the Soul King partitioned all of creation into the three worlds, there was Hell.”

Grimmjow hadn’t known this. He had always assumed Hell came into existence at the same time as the three worlds.

“Those who commit great sins are bound for Hell. These souls who are beyond redemption cannot be cleansed by Shinigami,” Kyōraku took a sip from his cup. “Before the three worlds, there were those who tried to cheat their way out of Hell. It was done by sacrificing a pure soul upon which they could pin their sins.”

Grimmjow did not know the expression he wore until Kyōraku looked at him and nodded in solemn agreement.

“Yes, it is repugnant, isn’t it?” said Kyōraku. “But it was done, and the place they did this was called the Devil’s Altar.”

“Is it still—”

“No. After the Soul King’s ascent, there were no more loopholes. The sinful go to Hell; there is no bargaining, no cheating. It no longer serves as a sacrificial altar for the wicked.”

Grimmjow frowned. This was all very interesting, but what was its relevance to—

“The Devil’s Altar is also the only fixed gateway to Hell, and it has not been opened since the Soul King’s ascent.”

Grimmjow had not known there even _was_ a fixed gateway to Hell, for Hell was not like the three worlds, which could be entered and exited at will through a Senkaimon, the Dangai, or Garganta. Hell was a separate dimension, which corrupt souls could enter—or more accurately, be pulled into—but could not leave. A gateway implied bi-directional travel.

“This was the other reason Yama-jii wanted White captured. He believed White intended to use the Devil’s Altar to open Hell.”

“But it’s gone now.” Obliterated by that devastating Cero blast.

Kyōraku dipped his head. “It is. Our white Hollow destroyed the gateway. It appears it was not trying to open Hell after all.”

“Then why hunt it still?” Grimmjow demanded. White had destroyed the only gateway to Hell. It had wiped out the bulk of that enormous Hollow swarm gathered around the Devil’s Altar. Inadvertently, it had done more to aid the Gotei than the Gotei had been able to manage on its own.

“You know why.”

Grimmjow did. Disdain curled his lips. “They’re afraid of what it is capable of.”

Kyōraku nodded. “We avoided a spillover, but division twelve detected a tip in the balance of souls from the Hollows lost that day. They were forced to take…decisive action to stabilize that imbalance.”

It took Grimmjow a moment to comprehend that: a Hollow who could wipe out tens of thousands with a single Cero, who could tip the balance of the three worlds with the sheer might of its destructive power. His heart thudded faster. He had fought that Hollow. He carried its mark across his torso. His bones remembered the rattle of that stunning black zanpakutō against Pantera. His flesh remembered the sweet sting of its razor edge.

“That is why we must capture it.”

“ _Tch_.” Hell, they couldn’t even locate it. It had come _to them_ every time instead. “We’ve already tried that twice.”

“To spectacular failure.” Tipping his hat lower, Kyōraku leaned back with the tea cup in hand. “Which is why it must come willingly.”

Grimmjow looked at him like he’d grown an extra head. “And why the _fuck_ would it do that?”

“I don’t know. Do you think we might have something it wants, Grimmjow-san?”

Something…it wanted? Enough to surrender itself to captivity?

“All that sake’s pickled your brain, Kyōraku.” Grimmjow picked up Pantera and got up to leave. “Lay off the booze and you won’t say such stupid shit.”

Kyōraku, fully reclined now with that absurd pink kimono laid out beneath him, gave a full-bodied chuckle. He raised his tea cup to Grimmjow and shouted after him, “Maybe you should think about it a bit, Grimmjow-san!”

…

Grimmjow did think about it.

Despite being a flamboyant, womanizing drunk, Kyōraku Shunsui was a shrewder man than he appeared. If he thought there was something the Gotei could offer to convince the Hollow to willingly submit to captivity, then perhaps…

No.

It was insanity for a Hollow to hand itself over to Shinigami, and White was not stupid. What could they possibly offer a Hollow like White?

Kyōraku didn’t know what he was talking about.

Grimmjow rolled over in bed and dragged the pillow over his head with an aggravated noise. He had been tossing and turning for at least an hour now, and he couldn’t find a spot on his bed comfortable enough, or a side of the pillow cool enough to fall asleep on. Everything from the light of the moon coming through his window to the chirping of crickets outside seemed intent on keeping him awake.

Pantera lay beside his bed within easy reach, and Grimmjow cast a hand out for her. His fingertips traced over the familiar ridges of the wrapped hilt and the straight edges and corners of the tsuba. Her spirit paced restless at the edge of his mind’s eye, just out of sight, and her angst mirrored Grimmjow’s own.

Their last encounter, cut short by too many intruders, had left Grimmjow wanting.

He had to see White again.

…

It took three days to learn the schedule of the guards posted around the Senkaimon courtyard, and then another day after that to find the coordinates of what had once been the Devil’s Altar. Use of the Senkaimon was closely monitored, and Grimmjow’s unauthorized expedition to Hueco Mundo would be found out after the fact.

At present, he did not care. He would worry about the consequences later.

Under the cover of night, he slipped out of the ninth division’s compound and at precisely midnight, when the changing of the guard left a narrow window of time in which the Senkaimon courtyard was left open, Grimmjow took his chance.

The Senkaimon left him in a spot indistinguishable from any other stretch of endless dunes in Hueco Mundo. But then Grimmjow turned, and in the distance lay the wide black scar in the ground where once the great white spire of the Devil’s Altar had reached for the sky.

The desert was empty and silent, and there were no Hollows in sight. Was White gone too?

It was possible. It could have moved on.

But Grimmjow felt in his bones it had not. Whatever had driven Grimmjow to venture to Hueco Mundo alone in the dead of night, White felt it too. It was why it kept coming to him, again and again. They were two forces of nature pulled together for reason no wiser than their mutual existence. They were the moon and tide.

Their thrall was gravity.

Grimmjow started towards what had once been the Devil’s Altar as Kyōraku’s words replayed in his mind. Before the splitting of creation into the three worlds, this had been the sacrificial site of pure souls.

He stopped in place. Forcing his hand away from Pantera’s hilt, he lowered his arms to his sides and clenched his fists. Thus far, their swords had been drawn upon every meeting. This time, Grimmjow wanted something different. He flexed his reiatsu, then closed his eyes and took a slow breath in and out.

_Boom._

When he opened them again, White was in front of him.

Its hands were empty. The black zanpakutō was slung over its back, and the Hollow was still and silent as it regarded Grimmjow. It stood tall and straight, its body cut from white stone, almost human in appearance but for the mask and the clawed hands and feet.

It was strange, to look upon this creature and know what it was capable of. It possessed the power to tip the balance of worlds, yet it was beholden to Grimmjow by some force beyond his understanding.

“What do you want with me?” Grimmjow asked.

The Hollow stepped forward, and he took a step back with a reflexive reach for Pantera. But then it froze, and Grimmjow forced his hand down and steeled his resolve. As much as he wanted to cross swords again, he craved an answer more.

He waited.

White took another step towards him, slow and cautious like Grimmjow was a wildcat that might spook. This time, Grimmjow did not retreat, did not flinch, as White raised its hand towards him.

Clawed fingers touched the raised scar on Grimmjow’s collar and traced it until it disappeared beneath his uniform. White pulled back and touched its mask with the same hand, running over three deep scratches in the white bone from temple to jaw.

Grimmjow’s fingers flexed at his side, remembering the feel of Pantera’s claws gouging those marks. He would have preferred that his mark be left on White’s flesh, as White’s mark on him had been. But a Hollow’s mask was its heart, wasn’t it?

Perhaps he had left the deeper scar after all.

With a crooked grin, Grimmjow nodded at the Hollow. “Yeah, asshole. You marked me, so I returned the favor.”

Those yellow eyes narrowed; the Hollow was smiling again beneath its mask.

“Tell me your name.”

White tilted its head.

“I know you can talk, Hollow. If you ain’t gonna use that tongue of yours…” Grimmjow’s eyes turned wild as Pantera’s spirit surged within his heart. He reached for her blade. “I’ll cut it out of your mouth!”

_Clang!_

In an instant, White’s sword was drawn and clashed against Pantera. White’s reiatsu flowed through its blade, smoldering like the embers of a latent fire. It licked Grimmjow’s skin, its sting a reminder of the devastation it was capable of, its ebb and flow an invitation to courtship.

Grimmjow answered with a press of his own reiatsu.

White’s eyes flickered shut, and Grimmjow sucked in a breath. The Hollow _enjoyed_ the feel of his reiatsu. Every crossing of their blades was a brief collision of reiatsu, and every splitting of flesh seeded reiatsu into the opponent’s body. After their first meeting, Grimmjow had carried with him a whisper of White’s reiatsu for days in the healing wound that crossed his entire torso.

They exchanged a series of blows, each parried, each an exchange of reiatsu in miniature. White’s reiatsu flared and waned with curious lability, spiking when the Hollow lunged at Grimmjow, dipping lower when it retreated. It was with jarring surprise then that Grimmjow realized:

The mighty Hollow could not contain its own reiatsu.

These fluctuations were akin to those of a young Shinigami who had not yet mastered control, still commanded by the tides of his mood and stamina. Grimmjow had been so captivated by the sheer strength and magnitude of White’s reiatsu that he had not noticed this before.

Grimmjow deflected a strike, and in the next breath, released his sword. Pantera settled upon his arms and hands, and the dizzying rush of power from her released state set Grimmjow’s blood alight. Every color flushed more intense, every sound rang louder in his ears. His body thrummed with restless energy.

Grimmjow’s claws found their mark in the meat of White’s shoulder, shredding skin to ribbons and slicing his flesh clean through to white bone. It was fascinating, that beneath that marble skin was red flesh and blood, the same as any other opponent Grimmjow had ever fought.

Blood splattered on desert sand and dripped down Grimmjow’s hand. He ran his tongue over his knuckles, and savored for a moment the Hollow’s distinctive reiatsu that ran as hot as its blood.

“You feel like telling me your name now?”

White lunged at him with a roar, and Grimmjow rammed the blade of his right arm between the open jaws. He twisted his arm to wedge its mouth open, and aimed into it with his other hand.

“Hadō number thirty-one—”

Grimmjow grinned. If the Hollow wouldn’t talk, then it didn’t need a mouth, did it?

“— _Shakkahō._ ”

But the red light coalescing between them was not solely Grimmjow’s _Shakkahō_. Another attack was gathering between the Hollow’s jaws, and Grimmjow’s eyes blew wide.

 _Cero!_ At point blank range, he would be obliterated.

He tried to retreat, but the arm blade he had used to immobilize the Hollow’s jaws was now used against him. The Hollow clenched its jaws tight, unminding of the roof of its mouth splitting and blood trickling down Pantera’s blade.

_Fuck!_

There was no time to wrench himself free. Grimmjow gathered his reiatsu around himself like armor. Cero and _Shakkahō_ discharged at the same instant, and collided at point blank range between them.

The impact blew them apart with a force that knocked the air out of Grimmjow’s lungs. He gasped for air, but it was heavy smoke that filled his mouth. He hit the ground in a shower of sand and coughed for breath.

His skin was singed, but he was in one piece. That Cero had been barely a tiny fraction of the power Grimmjow had witnessed before, not even at the level of a Bala.

The smoke cleared. White was kneeling, blood dripping down its teeth, its mask cracked at the jaw. The crack widened, and then the entire lower jaw of the mask crumbled and fell away.

Grimmjow forgot to breathe.

There was a face beneath that mask—white-skinned, pale-lipped, a strong jawline dripping blood. The lips parted with labored breaths.

White could have destroyed him. It had him—dead to rights—in the path of its Cero. Grimmjow had seen what White’s Cero was capable of. That Cero could have easily overpowered his kidō and incinerated him into particles of reishi.

Instead, the Hollow had held back. That Cero had been not even strong enough to fully negate his _Shakkahō_ , and now its mask was broken.

 _What are you playing at?_ Grimmjow grit his teeth. _What the fuck are you doing?_

The Hollow’s unwavering gaze burrowed under Grimmjow’s skin. It rose to its feet, hefted its sword—Grimmjow sank into a low stance, claws flexed and ready—

“Bakudō number sixty-three. _Sajō Sabaku_.”

A yellow rope of light shot out and bound White around its torso. From behind a shimmering kidō barrier, Kyōraku Shunsui appeared with palm raised towards White.

With a horrid shriek, White bucked against the binding spell. Grimmjow spun around. Where had Kyōraku come from—?

“Senbonzakura Kageyoshi.”

Kuchiki Byakuya stepped forward, emerged from nothing and heralded by a flurry of deadly pink.

Had they been _hiding_ here, waiting for Grimmjow? When did—

“ _Shoot to kill_ , Shinsō.”

The Hollow disappeared with a soft _boom_ and reappeared a safe distance away, having dodged both Senbonzakura’s first attack and Shinsō’s deadly reach. Ichimaru retracted his blade; Kuchiki directed the gust of petal-blades towards the Hollow once more.

It dodged again. The Hollow bent almost in half as it strained against the kidō rope, bucking and screaming like a half-wild thing, its voice rising in a maddened pitch. Grimmjow grimaced, for this was a creature that did not belong in chains, who could not— _should not_ —be tamed.

Its struggle was useless, for _Sajō Sabaku_ could not be broken by sheer force, especially when cast by a master practitioner like Kyōraku—

The Hollow’s screams pitched higher, its fearsome red-black reiatsu surging like a great wave, rising in slow crescendo with a peak unseen. The yellow light of _Sajō Sabaku_ flickered and splintered—Kyōraku and Ichimaru took a step back; even Kuchiki’s impassive face faltered—and then the kidō spell shattered in an explosion of light. White burst free, but it did not run. It turned, its eyes now fixed on the unwelcome interlopers, and its reiatsu continued to rise.

“Daiguren Hyōrinmaru!”

The ice dragon did not reach White; its reiatsu flared outwards like a whip, guided by no gesture, no direction, and clove the dragon in two.

The air had turned to sludge. Grimmjow’s chest heaved with the labor of each breath, and he was not alone. Hitsugaya was panting, and beads of sweat glistened on Kuchiki’s temple. And still the Hollow’s reiatsu was rising.

It would crest soon, and when it did…

Grimmjow raised his blades and came at the Hollow.

“Jaegerjaquez, wait!”

The Hollow wouldn’t kill him. It had already shown its hand with that last Cero. Grimmjow raised his arms, claws flexed and arm blades poised to strike. White narrowed its eyes, shifted its stance, and then its gaze flicked towards something behind Grimmjow.

Grimmjow blinked, and the Hollow in front of him was behind him instead. He turned to look over his shoulder, and White had its back to him, its sword raised against a great spinning blade of wind. With a pulse of that monstrous reiatsu, the wind blade was dispelled. It took a moment for Grimmjow’s mind to catch up to what he was seeing.

That technique belonged to Katen Kyōkotsu. It had been aimed at his back, and White had saved him from being split in two by Kyōraku’s Bushōgoma.

“What the _FUCK_ was that?” he roared at Kyōraku.

Kyōraku put up his hands with a disarming smile. “My bad, Grimmjow-san! Please excuse my poor aim.”

Poor aim, his ass. Grimmjow had half a mind to shoot a Garra round back in retaliation, until he took in White’s defensive stance, and Kyōraku’s careful scrutiny. He stopped.

Kyōraku was not as slovenly or careless as he pretended to be. That attack had been aimed at Grimmjow, and White had stopped it. What was Kyōraku playing at?

These captains had been here waiting for Grimmjow, watching him fight the Hollow from behind their hidden kidō barriers. They had known he was coming. There must have been people watching Grimmjow at the Senkaimon courtyard, when he’d believed it was unguarded. Perhaps they had been watching him even before that.

They were here to capture White, and they had known Grimmjow would come alone.

The Hollow had its back to him, but Grimmjow sensed an understanding between them that needed no words. Just as White would not kill him, he would not attack White from the back.

In an instant, White was gone from Grimmjow’s back and it was upon Kyōraku instead. Kyōraku stopped it with his dual blades crossed above his head, and thus began an exchange of blows too fast to follow. The clash of their blades rang like thunder, with Kyōraku stepping back beneath the force of White’s onslaught. There was something different in the way White was attacking Kyōraku. He had fought other captains before, but there was something in the sharpness of his movements, the aggression in his strikes, that Grimmjow had never seen before.

“Ah, Hollow-san!” Kyōraku protested. “I apologized for my mistake, don’t you think you could be more forgiving?”

In answer, White stepped back, dipped its head with the horns pitching forward and aimed at Kyōraku.

Grimmjow knew that stance. He flash stepped back, gathered his reiatsu in defense and braced himself for another earth-shattering Cero.

So focused was he on White that he was startled to notice Ichimaru at his back, standing uncomfortably close over his shoulder with that snake-smile upon his lips and Shinsō clutched in his hand. What was more, White noticed too. It turned towards them, forgetting Kyōraku, its eyes wide and its mouth half open, and the charging Cero between its horns dissipated.

Kyōraku struck.

Blood flew in a wide sweep where his blade fell across White’s front, and then, before the Hollow could right itself, Senbonzakura was upon it in a swarm of deadly blades.

Grimmjow sucked in a breath. This was it. This marked the shift in the tide of battle, because there was no way White could fend off a released Senbonzakura immediately after sustaining a direct hit from Kyōraku.

The swirling sphere of Senbonzakura’s hundred thousand petal-blades obscured the Hollow from sight. Kuchiki Byakuya guided it with raised palm and deadly focus that rarely saw his objective failed. Sweat dripped from his brow; his jaw clenched in rigid set. The roar of Senbonzakura’s movements—like the rush of a storm gale—was challenged by a strange humming sound coming from inside it, felt in the air and reverberating into Grimmjow’s bones.

Red-black reiatsu appeared through the gaps of Senbonzakura’s petals until a massive swell of it spilled over from within. Senbonzakura fell apart, a myriad of ethereal pink petals dusting through the air, and White stood at its center, its sword-bearing arm a blur.

 _Impossible_.

It had struck down every one of Senbonzakura’s blades.

Kuchiki’s wide eyes mirrored Grimmjow’s disbelief.

The Hollow was not done. It ignored Kuchiki, stepped past Kyōraku and Hitsugaya, and came for Grimmjow. Grimmjow readied his blades, but White had not raised its own. It stopped in front of him, only a few paces apart, and tilted its head.

Behind White, Hitsugaya caught Grimmjow’s eye. Slowly, so as not to catch the Hollow’s attention, he traced with his finger in the air the shape of a square and pointed at Grimmjow’s feet.

With a start, Grimmjow realized where he was. To his right was a barren tree which bent to one side as though windswept. Grimmjow recognized that tree. He was remarkably close to the very spot where Kurotsuchi had hidden the four anchors of the Four-Way Binding Harness on their last mission. White stood just beyond the invisible boundary.

Somewhere nearby, Kurotsuchi must be hidden, waiting to recite the activating incantation.

White was panting. The wound Kyōraku gave it bled heavily, but there were also many smaller wounds on it. It had not escaped Senbonzakura unscathed, after all. But it was not beaten. Even after this, it was not yet at its limit. It could escape still.

Ichimaru’s eyes were upon Grimmjow. Kuchiki, Hitsugaya, Kyōraku—all of them were watching Grimmjow, and the weight of their expectation dropped upon Grimmjow like stones.

This was it. If he lured White but a few steps closer—if he could hold White there by the strength of whatever enchantment Grimmjow had over it—then it would all be over.

Grimmjow swallowed.

It would all be over. This mighty Hollow, which had captivated him, which had commanded his attention without mercy, without rest in waking and in sleep, would belong to the Shinigami. There would be no wonder left in Hueco Mundo.

He took no step back, but the Hollow came forward. Grimmjow’s heart dropped to his gut and a shout wormed up his throat, but did not escape the cage of his teeth. _Turn back._

The Hollow met his eyes, and its lips, beneath the edge of that broken mask, curled up at the corners as it took the final step forward. Grimmjow’s heart stuttered.

_It knew._

It shouldn’t, but it _knew_ , and it was coming into the trap.

Three and a half seconds. Somewhere in the vicinity, unseen and silent, Kurotsuchi was reciting the incantation. Grimmjow knew the words by heart.

_The years extend without death. What is the limit of longevity?_

What was White doing? Was it insane? Shinigami destroyed Hollows. This was the way of the world, immutable, absolute, as it had been since the splitting of creation. Walking into this trap was suicide.

_Where is the place of immortality?_

Grimmjow wanted to shout at it— _get away!_ —wanted to preserve this small piece of unknowable wonder to roam unfettered in the desert sands. But the eyes of his own comrades upon him, ready to condemn him for insubordination and treason if he so much as breathed a word, stayed his tongue.

_What do the giants guard?_

Yellow eyes bore into Grimmjow, and they did not read bloodlust or fear, nor anger. Grimmjow could not name the look in those eyes, but he was certain no one had ever looked at him quite like that before.

_The spreading nine-stemmed nuphar, and the cannabis flowers—_

This was wrong.

_—where must they grow?_

Golden light slammed down on four sides, penning White in an unforgiving column that stretched towards the sky.

The Hollow fell.


	4. The Arrancar

Grimmjow stood outside the column of light, and time stood still.

The world moved around him. Kuchiki and Kyōraku descended to the ground, their blades dropping out of released states but not yet sheathed. From his right, Hitsugaya and Ichimaru approached.

The Hollow lay within the kidō cage, crumpled in a heap of orange hair and white limbs so still it might have been dead. The oppressive crush of its reiatsu had dropped to something much more bearable.

Kurotsuchi appeared, tearing down the shimmering veil of the concealing kidō around him with a bone-white hand. He walked forward with wide eyes, keen upon the contents of his precious cage, and Grimmjow’s skin crawled at the meticulous way his stare dissected the Hollow from head to foot. Raising a hand towards the wall of golden light with three fingers and palm facing outwards, he began the final incantation.

“ _The framework of heaven spans above and across_ …”

Grimmjow’s knuckles turned white around Pantera’s hilt. Her blade keened for Kurotsuchi’s blood; Grimmjow strangled it to stillness.

“ _When the vital yang breath dispels, does death follow?_ ”

The sand shifted; the four hidden anchor points of the Four-Way Binding Harness shot out of the ground and wound around the Hollow’s wrists and ankles, changing shape like molten metal and molding into golden bands.

The Hollow woke with a shrieking cry that raised the hairs on Grimmjow’s arms. He raised Pantera with a half step back as White shot up, spine arched as though struck by lightning, head tossed back and hard muscles straining.

But the golden bands held. The warm light of the cage dissipated and reformed as ropes, pulling the Hollow’s arms back behind its back, snaking across its bare chest, its throat, belly and thighs in intricate geometric patterns crisscrossing white flesh and winding through the hole in the center of its chest.

The spell’s name made itself clear now. Four-Way Binding _Harness_.

The Hollow knelt, chest heaving, head bowed, long hair spilled like drapes around its face, arms bound back so tight the rope cut into flesh. The bone mask splintered; the great horns crumbled. White shards fell to the ground like shattered porcelain, and the change rippled down its body. Ghost-pale flesh flushed with color, black war markings faded away, claws turned to blunt nails. At last it lifted its chin, and the air seized in Grimmjow’s throat.

It was the face of a human boy looking at him.

Wide eyes—brown, not yellow—a straight nose, a generous mouth with gritted teeth and jaw that hinted of masculine strength not yet matured. It looked like a boy, a striking adolescent on the brink of manhood, and Grimmjow found sudden clarity on the Hollow’s tenuous grasp over its own power.

White’s control had felt immature simply because it _was_.

Grimmjow searched for a remnant of the Hollow on that face, and found none. No fragment of mask, not even the colored markings most Arrancar retained of their Hollow form. But for the hole in the center of his chest, he appeared wholly human.

Kurotsuchi kicked the boy over, and he hit the ground with his face pressed into the sand. Like a wild thing, the Hollow snarled and snapped his teeth at the captain.

“Captain Kurotsuchi!”

“It is safe.” Kurotsuchi planted his foot between the boy’s shoulders. “As you can see, he is quite restrained now. My Four-Way Binding Harness is absolute.”

White’s eyes read murder.

Kurotsuchi leaned down and picked up the fallen sword, and the Hollow screamed his fury. Grimmjow grimaced and ran a finger over Pantera’s hilt, and the living warmth of her spirit rose to meet his touch. Grimmjow did not suffer any living soul to touch Pantera; it seemed White was the same.

Kurotsuchi grinned with all of his teeth at the Hollow. “You are going to teach me much, so I thank you in advance.” He straightened, hands clasped behind his back around the hilt of the Hollow’s sword, and stepped off to open the Senkaimon.

Grimmjow turned from Kurotsuchi’s retreating back to the boy laying in the sand, bound so tightly he could not even bring himself upright. He certainly could not walk.

Kuchiki and Hitsugaya were already walking after Kurotsuchi towards the Senkaimon. Ichimaru stood at a distance and made no move, but his stupid fucking fox-face watched Grimmjow like he expected something of him. Kyōraku was watching too.

It did not look as though anyone intended to handle White, so Grimmjow bent over, grabbed the Hollow by the ropes wrapping around his chest—they were wound so tight he could barely get his fingers in—and hauled him over his shoulder. The Hollow was lighter than he’d expected.

He tensed, waiting for claws to shred his skin or for teeth to sink into his shoulder. But of course, the Hollow couldn’t do a damn thing. His arms were bound behind his back, his teeth were blunt and human. His reiatsu was barely a tickle on Grimmjow’s skin. Grimmjow’s stomach turned.

_Pathetic._

White squirmed, wriggling unhappily against Grimmjow.

“Quit moving,” Grimmjow growled. “Or I’ll drag you by your fucking hair.”

The Hollow twisted his body with a growling protest, and Grimmjow shoved him off and let him fall in a heavy heap of bound limbs. White glared up at him through a tangle of wild orange hair, teeth bared and eyes flashing. Grimmjow grabbed him by a fistful of hair, ready to make good on his promise. But the Hollow turned his head quick as a snake and sank sharp teeth into the meat of Grimmjow’s palm. Grimmjow let go with a startled shout.

“Is it still too much for you to handle in this state?” Hitsugaya tossed a look over his shoulder.

“Fuck off, runt.”

Grimmjow turned back to the Hollow. The vicious thing glared as he licked Grimmjow’s blood off his lips. He was not entirely tamed by the Binding Harness, after all. Grimmjow smirked. Fine, the Hollow had made his point. Grimmjow reached for him again, and the boy showed him teeth that were a lot sharper than they looked.

“I’ll carry you right,” Grimmjow told him, and when he picked him up again, it was with one arm under his knees and the other supporting his back.

This time, the Hollow did not bite. He did not squirm. His narrowed eyes turned wide, and he looked at Grimmjow with an unreadable face. It was strange, how docile his suppressed reiatsu felt, when Grimmjow had seen what it was capable of—

_Cero more destructive than the sun, tasting like fire and ash in the back of his throat._

—but the binding spell was, as Kurotsuchi said, absolute. His skin split and bled where the ropes penetrated the Hollow hole in the center of his chest.

Grimmjow looked away.

…

Yamamoto was waiting for them when they returned to the Senkaimon courtyard, and his gaze fell on the Hollow first, and then to Kurotsuchi. He exchanged words with the captain of the twelfth—Grimmjow strained his ears but could not make out what was said—before approaching.

“Captain Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez.” Yamamoto’s grizzled hands were folded atop his walking staff, and the Hollow in Grimmjow’s arms eyed him warily. Of course, thought Grimmjow. Power acknowledged power, and a creature like White would not be fooled by Yamamoto’s frail appearance. “Your unsanctioned trip to Hueco Mundo is excused in light of your success in capturing the white Hollow. Your punishment is waived, this time.”

 _Unsanctioned_. Grimmjow snorted. “ _Tch_. You were counting on me to go.”

“Hm.” Yamamoto turned to White, and White met his face without faltering. But when the old man spoke again, it was still Grimmjow he addressed. “Take that to Captain Kurotuschi’s division and help him secure it.”

The other captains did not part ways, as they normally would following a mission. Kyōraku, Ichimaru, Kuchiki, and Hitsugaya lingered with Grimmjow as he accompanied Kurotsuchi to the twelfth. Kyōraku’s left hand rested at his side, very close to the hilts of his dual blades. Ichimaru matched Grimmjow’s pace looking forward, but Grimmjow had the distinct impression he was watching White from the corner of his eye.

Even with White bound and suppressed, the captains were still wary.

Soon after they left the Senkaimon courtyard, their little convoy began to attract attention. Before long, they had gathered a small crowd of onlookers, and the whispers began.

“Did the captains go on another mission?”

“—is Captain Jaegerjaquez holding? Don’t tell me _that’s_ the—”

“—can’t be a Hollow, there’s no mask—”

Their whispered curiosity grated on Grimmjow’s nerves. The sun was barely risen; it was probably seven in the morning. Why weren’t they getting breakfast, or in the training fields? Had they nothing better to do than to stand idly by and gossip?

White looked all around, wide-eyed with his lips half parted, and not just at their onlookers. He stared at the mundane off-white walls and clay roofs surrounding them, at every passing tree and shrub, drinking in every sight Grimmjow passed a hundred times a day and thought nothing of. He turned his head up, taking in the blue sky, and then his eyes tracked further east towards the sun—he flinched and recoiled, squeezing his eyes shut.

What kind of idiot stared directly into the sun?

And then Grimmjow realized.

There was no sun in Hueco Mundo. There was no blue sky, no green trees, nothing but endless desert sand below and darkness above. Perhaps this was White’s first time seeing any of these things.

Soon enough, the Hollow would only see the inside of Kurotsuchi’s laboratory.

The stares and whispers followed them all the way to the twelfth division barracks. No doubt by noon, the entire Gotei compound would be alight with rumors about the captains’ secret mission and what they had brought back from Hueco Mundo. As they neared the twelfth division, Grimmjow’s feet dragged, made heavy not only by the burden in his arms.

The Hollow had done this to himself.

White may as well have put those shackles on himself, because he had _known_ and he had walked into the trap anyways.

_Idiot._

Hot anger flashed in Grimmjow’s chest. Why had he done this? Why hadn’t the Hollow just left when he sensed the trap, like he had done before?

White was no longer gaping at their surroundings like a child at a festival. He had settled on Grimmjow again, unwavering, unsettling, eyes so large Grimmjow could see himself reflected in them. If the Hollow weren’t so pathetic right now, Grimmjow would have used Pantera’s claws to gouge those fucking eyes out. Lizard-yellow or plain brown, those eyes infuriated him.

“What?” he snapped.

The Hollow said nothing, but he rested his head against Grimmjow’s shoulder and released a long breath.

Kurotsuchi led them through the gates of the twelfth division and into the main research building of the Shinigami Research and Development Institute, which was filled with twelfth division officers who stopped to stare at the procession of captains and the single prize they had returned with.

“Captain Kurotsuchi did it!”

“—is that really the white Hollow?”

Grimmjow cared even less for their whispering than he had for the other Shinigami outside, and when the Hollow turned his face away from the spectators behind the curtain of his long hair, Grimmjow turned his shoulder a little to cast his features deeper into shadow.

They took a freight elevator down. The place seemed darker with each floor they descended, and when they stepped off, their footsteps echoed loud and empty in the long corridor.

At the end of the corridor stood a large room keyed to Kurotsuchi’s handprint. Inside, Kurotsuchi gestured to a wide platform, which stood alone at the center of the room like a display, surrounded by computer panels and monitors.

“Place it up there, Jaegerjaquez.”

Grimmjow’s feet were heavy as he walked up to the platform and deposited White upon it. Wide-eyed, the Hollow made a low noise in his throat and turned his head to follow Grimmjow’s movements as he stepped down. The noise pitched higher as Grimmjow turned his back, and then a pulsing flare of the Hollow’s potent reiatsu swept over the room.

Grimmjow spun on his heels, and the other captains drew their swords in an instant. White was tethered and suppressed—he should not be able to flex his reiatsu like that.

Kurotsuchi dashed to the electronic dashboard in front of the platform and his fingers flew over the controls. The kidō ropes binding the Hollow changed form once more, and dissipated again into four walls of golden light that closed around him on all sides.

The Hollow rose to his feet, no longer bound by ropes, but nor was he free. The metal cuffs around his limbs gleamed bright.

He charged in Grimmjow’s direction. His hands curled into fists and slammed against the barrier, but the wall of light held firm without a flicker.

Grimmjow looked over at Kurotsuchi, who stood over the control panel with hands clutching either side of the dashboard and teeth gritted. The scientist’s temple was beaded with sweat.

Was the binding spell really as faultless as he proclaimed?

The Hollow bristled. He threw himself against the barrier, swiping with fingers flexed as though he still had claws. He fell back, gathered himself, and charged again. A low growl started in his throat, rising in pitch and volume until he was howling again, like he had back in Hueco Mundo. Human though he looked now, White still sounded like a beast.

Grimmjow turned. He didn’t need to see this pitiful display of a caged beast, a once-proud creature reduced to captivity and impotence. Mighty the Hollow may have been in Hueco Mundo, but here, he was just a chained dog.

The Hollow’s screams followed him long after he had left the twelfth division.

…

The captain’s meeting following the capture provided the first insight into White’s nature.

“The white Hollow is an Arrancar,” said Kurotsuchi.

Grimmjow’s eyes widened, and all present were listening as intently as he to Kurotsuchi’s findings.

_Arrancar._

It was as Kyōraku had suspected at the start, then.

“It was not apparent at first because of its full-face mask, but I have determined that its form in Hueco Mundo was a released state. Under my Four-Way Binding Harness, the shape it takes now is the sealed state of a natural Arrancar.”

“You are certain?” Kuchiki Byakuya did not turn to address Kurotsuchi. He stood looking forward, his chin tipped high, his back straight. “The white Hollow’s human shape has no fragment of mask at all, nor estigma. Arrancar retain some remnant of their mask.”

Hitsugaya nodded his agreement. “Captain Kurotsuchi, is it not true that an Arrancar’s zanpakutō also disappears upon release? It is the essence of their Hollow power. White still had its zanpakutō after you sealed it.”

The black zanpakutō that had given Grimmjow his scar was confiscated to some secret, secured location, no doubt guarded by a web of kidō spells to ensure it was not reunited with its wielder.

“Your observations are correct. But the white Hollow does not abide by the common rules we understand of Hollows and Arrancar. It has none of its original mask, but it is an Arrancar nonetheless. It retains its sword even when released. For this reason, I suspect it may have a second release.”

_Second release._

Was Kurotsuchi suggesting that the terrifying power they had witnessed in Hueco Mundo was not the pinnacle of White’s strength? That he had _more_ to unleash than that earth-shattering Cero?

Silence fell like a heavy cloak upon those assembled. Kuchiki’s jaw was tight. Suì-Fēng’s hand rested upon the hilt of her sword, as though the mention of White’s second release might summon it forth right there and then.

Kenpachi grinned.

“When you gonna let it out, Kurotsuchi?” he demanded. “The rest of you got a go at this thing. I’ve been waiting my turn.”

 _Bang!_ Yamamoto’s staff struck the floor.

“The white Hollow is not to be released, under any circumstances.”

Kenpachi’s face fell. Grimmjow felt his disappointment even more keenly, but it was nothing short of what he had expected. They had captured White, but bringing him to Seireitei had put them in a precarious situation. The security of the twelfth division and Kurotsuchi’s binding kidō were all that stood between Seireitei and a Hollow of monstrous power.

A vicious voice inside him jeered, more loudly than was perhaps appropriate for a captain of the Gotei, that the Shinigami had overstepped their bounds. Like the proverbial snake that had bitten a rat too large to swallow, the Gotei had imprisoned a Hollow beyond their understanding and were now tasked with ensuring he did not destroy them.

Did the weight of that burden seed fear in Kurotsuchi’s heart?

“Captain Kurotsuchi. Are we assured of the twelfth division’s security?”

There was the slightest pause before Kurotsuchi answered, and Grimmjow read in this moment the truest answer.

_No._

“I am closely monitoring the Hollow,” said Kurotsuchi. “At this time, it is subdued.”

_For now._

The unspoken words fell louder. Kurotsuchi wasn’t confident that the infallible binding spell he had so boasted of would hold indefinitely. Grimmjow had told him as much, but in his blustering, self-assured arrogance in his own intellect, Kurotsuchi had not even entertained the idea that brute power could overcome his cleverness.

“You will alert us immediately if the situation changes. The security around the Hollow is your utmost priority, Captain Kurotsuchi.” Yamamoto opened his eyes and fixed the captain of the twelfth with a firm gaze. “Your research will take second priority to the safety of us all.”

Kurotsuchi dipped his head. “Yes.”

Lip curled in disdain, Grimmjow stepped out of line with shoulders thrown back.

“Oi, you fuckers. How long have you all been watching me?”

Kyōraku’s ever-present smile slipped. Kuchiki had his face turned up, and Hitsugaya’s gaze was cast to the side. Not one met Grimmjow’s eyes.

So that was how it was, huh? Grimmjow’s blood ran hot.

Plotting a capture mission behind his back, puppeteering and monitoring his movements, and then using him to bait the Hollow, all without telling him? Grimmjow was a captain of the Gotei, the same as any of them, and they had the gall to move him like a pawn?

“Captain Jaegerjaquez,” Aizen began. “I apologize for the deceit. It was—”

What the _fuck_? Even Aizen, who had been only marginally involved in missions regarding White, had been in on this?

Grimmjow didn’t listen to the rest. With a sting in his gut and a sneer on his lips, he turned on his heel and left.

…

Life among the Gotei returned to its usual pace, yet nothing was as it had been.

The Hollow was closer now than he had ever been, yet he felt farther beyond Grimmjow’s reach than he had in Hueco Mundo. At night, Grimmjow no longer lay awake envisioning a solitary white statue amidst empty desert sand.

The statue was a boy, and the boy was caged deep in the lower levels of the twelfth division’s research facility.

That final image of White as Grimmjow had seen him last—a boy with a human face and blunt nails, unarmed and trapped within a cage of light—was one he shunned from his mind often. When it came to him at night, he squeezed his eyes shut tighter. When it intruded upon his waking moments, he distracted himself with a finger swept over Pantera’s blade. The bite of her steel and the bloom of blood on his hand brought up more palatable memories to lose himself in—the tearing of his shoulder under White’s jaws, the rattle of his bones beneath the blows of the black zanpakutō, the dull ache of the scar across his chest.

The taste of ash in the back of his throat.

Equal to Grimmjow’s unrest was his anger. At the Gotei for puppeteering him— _him_! Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, who had clawed his way up to become captain of the ninth, who bent to no other’s will. They had played on their perception of his nature and unwittingly, Grimmjow had rewarded them for it.

But the greater part of his anger was directed elsewhere, towards the Hollow whose unfathomable submission had landed him prisoner and Grimmjow bereft of the greatest exhilaration he had known in many years.

There was no wonder left in Hueco Mundo. No reason for Grimmjow to sneak off at night, nothing to entice his imagination or interest when he was assigned a mission.

The Hollow was out of sight, but he was far from being out of Grimmjow’s mind. The captain found himself standing before the front gates of the twelfth division at times, though it was out of the way of most of his daily errands and coming this way took the longer route to and from his preferred training fields.

When he closed his eyes and stretched his senses, he felt nothing of White’s distinctive reiatsu.

Rumors made their way down the ranks until every Shinigami knew of what lay caged within the twelfth division. Like with most things that passed through the grapevine, everyone had their own theories about the captains’ covert mission to Hueco Mundo and their captive.

 _Captain Jaegerjaquez subdued and captured it_ , Grimmjow overheard one evening while returning from the training fields.

He had scoffed at that. Flattering, but had they not heard that White had held its own in combat against many captains at once?

 _It’s actually a Shinigami that turned into a Hollow,_ he heard another time, from a seated officer of the fourth division to a wide-eyed new recruit.

There were more, and each rang more absurd than the last.

The Hollow wasn’t a Hollow at all, but a Shinigami gone rogue and exiled to Hueco Mundo long ago. The Hollow had a personal vendetta against Captain Jaegerjaquez and was attempting to assassinate him. Captain Jaegerjaquez knew the Hollow from before it had become a Hollow.

Grimmjow ignored the rumors, but for one.

_The Hollow’s cage is failing._

And he knew—as certain as the sun rises in the east and water flows downhill—that there was more truth than lie in this. The Four-Way Binding Harness would not hold. Kurotsuchi Mayuri was a master of kidō, a clever man of many tricks and turns, but Grimmjow was fluent in the language of power and will, and White had spoken to him.

He had submitted to the Shinigami by his own will, and he would rise again by the same.

…

Days passed without event. Grimmjow waited.

Three weeks after White’s capture, he woke in deep night and shot up in his bed fully alert. It was neither noise nor nightmare that had broken his sleep, but the prickling of his skin and the faint cloying weight of ash in his throat.

With heart pounding in his ears, Grimmjow threw off his blankets and belted a robe over his sleep trousers.

The research facility holding White lay in a different sector of the Gotei compounds. He should not be able to sense the Hollow’s reiatsu when he was standing just outside the twelfth division’s gates, let alone here in the ninth division’s barracks.

A loud pounding came at his door. Grimmjow seized Pantera and flung the door open to an Onmitsukidō messenger kneeling just outside.

“Captain Jaegerjaquez! Your presence is urgently needed at—”

Grimmjow didn’t need to hear the rest. He flash stepped past the messenger and made for the twelfth division compound.

It was finally happening.

Kurotsuchi’s cage was failing, and the Shinigami had no one to blame but themselves. Their own hubris in this act, in daring to believe they could contain the chaotic wild of Hueco Mundo, had found them with a monster in the very heart of Soul Society. If White came unleashed, if he fired his Cero within the walls of Seireitei, Seireitei could be devastated.

The twelfth division was in a state of chaos, with as many people awake during this hour of night as there were during the day. Inside the main building of the Shinigami Research and Development Institute, officers ran through the hallways shouting amidst blaring alarms and flashing red lights.

“—to basement level G-six! We just got report—”

“—maximum security, trigger the fail-safes! We cannot let it escape—”

“—Captain Kurotsuchi’s orders? He hasn’t—”

The Hollow’s reiatsu brushed over Grimmjow’s skin like static electricity, and the hair on his arms stood on end. The floor rumbled and shook beneath his feet as though made of bamboo matting instead of solid steel. It stopped him in the middle of a flash step as he steadied himself and waited for it to pass. Overhead, the lights flickered.

Through his teeth, Grimmjow sucked in a deep lungful of air laced with the Hollow’s potent reiatsu. He held it in his throat, savoring the rasping burn of its chaotic energy and the hinted taste of a remembered Cero, and then breathed it deep.

 _Rise_ , he thought. _Rise up, you damn Hollow. You don’t belong in this shithole._

The freight elevator was jammed shut. Grimmjow smashed through it without breaking stride, then dropped down the dark shaft and smashed again through the exit door into the sixth level down.

Down here, the Hollow’s reiatsu was strong enough to press like a physical touch upon Grimmjow’s skin, but nowhere near the oppressive level it had been in Hueco Mundo. It flared and ebbed, like the tides of a massive storm battering a dam fated to fail—still restrained, but only just.

Grimmjow followed the reiatsu and the monstrous scream down the hall, and burst through the door of the main holding room into chaos.

The Hollow upon the platform took center stage; he stood with his feet apart in a wide stance, head thrown back and his hair wild, howling like a storm gale. His face was human, yet in this moment, he appeared anything but. With claws flexed like the talons of a beast, black war paint streaking across his chest and over his shoulders from the Hollow hole, and wild reiatsu lashing out against his bonds, he stood above them all like a demon.

Grimmjow stopped to catch his breath.

Were they so sure the gates of Hell had not been opened, after all?

The walls of golden light of the Four-Way Binding Harness were conspicuously gone, and in their place were kidō ropes attached to each of the four binding cuffs on the Hollow’s limbs. Around the platform, holding one rope each were Komamura and Aizen on the right, Kuchiki and Ichimaru on the left. Kurotsuchi stood hunched over the control dashboard, and standing at their head with his walking staff clasped beneath his folded hands was Yamamoto himself.

White flexed an arm with deceptive strength, and Ichimaru’s footing slipped.

Komamura turned, fangs flashing. “Captain Jaegerjaquez!”

The fearsome roar cut short as White’s head whipped around towards Grimmjow. For the briefest instant, time stood still. Grimmjow’s vision narrowed down to a single tunnel between himself and the Hollow. White’s eyes gleamed yellow as they landed on him, and his face went slack.

As one, the captains doubled down and pulled. White fell to the floor facedown, and the sudden crash yanked Grimmjow back to the present. He stepped forward, and a dull _thwack_ struck him across the chest.

Yamamoto had his staff held out, barring Grimmjow from coming closer. “Captain Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez. You were quick to arrive.”

Grimmjow had been waiting for this moment for weeks. “Eh? You called me here to fight him, didn’t you?” Why was Yamamoto holding him back?

Like a receding tide, the Hollow’s reiatsu began to wane. He had stopped fighting the captains holding him down, and now he raised his head towards Grimmjow.

Grimmjow sensed something happening here beyond his understanding. Yamamoto had sent for him to be summoned, and now without so much as a fight, the Hollow had submitted yet again, just as he had back in Hueco Mundo.

The hair rose on the back of his neck. Grimmjow spun around.

Kyōraku stood behind him, his face in shadow beneath his straw hat, Katen Kyōkotsu released and held in both hands. His stance was relaxed, but Grimmjow’s was not.

Without thinking, Grimmjow had leapt aside and raised Pantera. He did not remember drawing her blade.

When had Kyōraku arrived? What was he doing so far back in the room, standing with his blades drawn behind Grimmjow, when the Hollow was in front of them?

Kyōraku was an ally, a fellow captain of the Gotei…so why did Grimmjow’s instincts whisper caution?

Kyōraku was not smiling. He released his shikai and walked past Grimmjow towards the platform with eyes steady upon White, his back turned to Grimmjow. The Hollow bared his teeth as Kyōraku approached, but his gaze passed from Kyōraku to Grimmjow and back again.

Leaning down to eye level, Kyōraku knelt much closer than caution advised. He spoke.

“Do we have an understanding, Hollow-san?”

An understanding?

The fuck was he talking about?

White looked again back at Grimmjow. The crease of his brow softened, and he gave a single, sharp nod. Kyōraku gestured at Kurotsuchi, and the scientist climbed up the platform bearing something in his hands.

White was placid as Kurotsuchi snapped a gold band of metal around his throat. The ropes disappeared. Golden lines of kidō crisscrossed the Hollow’s body from throat to wrists, wrists to torso to ankles, glowing bright for a moment before fading into skin. White went rigid.

The bottom of Grimmjow’s stomach fell out. What was going on?

Aizen stepped forward. “Are we certain of this?” he asked, frowning. “Again, I offer my services—”

He fell silent at a raised hand from Yamamoto. “Captain Jaegerjaquez—”

Grimmjow grit his teeth. Again, he was in the dark. They had been deciding things without him again, just as they had about the capture mission, and damned if Grimmjow was going to take this—

“—we entrust this Hollow to your watch.”

His thoughts ground to a jarring halt. Wait—

“ _WHAT?_ ”


	5. Hollow in a Strange Land

It was near dawn when Grimmjow finally left the twelfth division.

An orange-haired boy followed close behind.

The trek back to the ninth division barracks passed in a haze. At this hour of early morning, the streets of Seireitei were quiet and empty. The handful of Shinigami they passed dipped their heads respectfully at the captain and looked curiously at his companion, but said nothing. Grimmjow’s face welcomed neither greetings nor questions.

Grimmjow had thrown his robe over the boy’s bare shoulders to hide his Hollow hole, so White did not appear anything more than ordinary. The rumors of the white Hollow had varied widely in their description of his appearance, and no one would expect to see him walking freely in Seireitei in a captain’s company.

What would Grimmjow even say if anyone were to ask?

He had envisioned many scenarios when White inevitably broke out of his imprisonment: a great battle—of which he would be White’s primary opponent—untold damage to the Gotei compounds, perhaps even the ruin of Seireitei. In all of his grand wonderings, he had not imagined he might walk out of the twelfth division without a scratch, and with White padding barefoot behind him free.

Well, not exactly free.

Grimmjow glanced over his shoulder. The four golden bands of refined _sekkiseki_ which served as the anchor points of the Four-Way Binding Harness were still wound around the Hollow’s limbs—two binding the primary reiatsu vents at the wrists, two at the secondary vents at the ankles. Kurotsuchi had added a fifth point as lynchpin with the matching band around White’s throat. His reiatsu was crushed so low Grimmjow could barely sense it at even a close distance.

The Hollow looked up. His skin gleamed golden, his long hair colored fierce by the rising sun at his back.

Something stalled in Grimmjow’s chest, and he turned his scrutiny to the empty streets ahead of them.

At the gates of the ninth division, he paused.

The Hollow was to reside in one of the standard living quarters of an unranked officer. Many such units lay vacant in the main barracks, intended for new recruits, while Grimmjow’s captain’s quarters stood separate a short distance away.

The news had not yet broken among the rank and file that the white Hollow would be living amongst them. But when it did, many would not take kindly to it.

Would they be wrong to object?

So soon after demonstrating the futility of Kurotsuchi’s cage, White had been released on the very same binding kidō and a whispered promise Grimmjow did not understand.

What exactly had Kyōraku bargained for White’s compliance?

And Yamamoto—what was he thinking? It was not like the old man to unleash something so dangerous, so unpredictable as the white Hollow, not without some assurance of Seireitei’s safety. With Kurotsuchi’s modified binding spell, the Hollow looked and felt subdued. But was he really? What would happen when he bored of captivity?

_Hn._

What did Grimmjow care? Yamamoto and the others had made this decision without him; they could deal with the fallout. Grimmjow just hoped to be there to cross blades with White when it happened.

He led the Hollow to an empty unit at the end of the barracks which stood closest to his own living quarters.

The door opened to a sparsely furnished room, tidy but with a layer of silent vacancy dusted upon every surface. White stepped inside, looking around with a bland sort of curiosity. He went to the simple mat which served as a bed in the corner, and then to the closet which contained linens and the bare necessities of clothing.

The scene stifled with its absurd normalcy. Grimmjow had traded blows and blood with this Hollow, had watched him rearrange an entire landscape with his Cero, and now here he was showing him to his room like a host offering accommodations to a houseguest.

Grimmjow turned to go, and he was a few paces down the hall when he realized he was not alone.

“No.” He stopped, and pointed back at the open room. “You stay there.”

White clutched Grimmjow’s robe closer around his shoulders and the stubborn set of his jaw said what his absent voice did not. He was not ready to leave.

The long hours of missed sleep tonight throbbed a pounding rhythm in Grimmjow’s skull. He grabbed White by the back of his neck and steered him forcibly back towards the room. “Stay there, you stupid bastard,” he growled.

The barracks were waking up, and soon these grounds would be full of Shinigami. Grimmjow didn’t know how long it would take the rumors to start flying, or if there would be a formal announcement made about White. But in these quarters, White would be hidden and safe for at least a few hours.

Long enough for Grimmjow to catch some sleep and figure out what to do next.

White turned around and looked at Grimmjow, like he was waiting for a fucking invitation to lunch. Grimmjow’s robe pooled loose around his collar, held closed by one hand fisted in the front. It seemed he understood the importance of hiding his Hollow hole, at least for now.

Grimmjow shut the door in his face.

He crossed the courtyard, holding at bay all greetings from his division officers by the thunderous expression on his face. Inside his own quarters, Grimmjow kicked off his sandals before dropping facedown into his bed.

…

Grimmjow woke near noon with a fading dream and a throb in his head. As he blinked in the bright midday light and lay wondering why the sun was so high, the dream sharpened to stark clarity.

His trip to the twelfth division.

Kurotsuchi’s cage, at the precipice of failure. White’s roar, bearing a promise of destruction and rampage. Kyōraku’s cryptic bargain, Yamamoto’s declaration and order—

The spare robe he always kept thrown over the back of his chair was absent.

He shot upright in the bed. It had been no dream at all.

They really had released the white Hollow into his keep on nothing but a binding spell and a gambled bargain Grimmjow still didn’t understand. And Grimmjow had left that Hollow alone in an empty living unit in his own division’s barracks.

He did not bother with his door. With his palm sweat-slick on Pantera’s hilt, he threw open his window and leapt outside.

The sky was clear. Sunlight dappled his skin through the blush-pink blossoms of a flowering plum tree. A group of unseated officers strolled across the grounds carrying bento lunches from the kitchens, and spotting Grimmjow, raised their hands and voices in greeting.

Grimmjow blinked.

Seireitei was not alight in fire and reiatsu. All was quiet and still.

He made towards the barracks at a brisk pace, and inside the building at the threshold of his destination, he flung open the door with the half-formed expectation to find the room empty and his Hollow absconded.

In the corner on the humble sleeping mat, the Hollow lay on his side curled beneath Grimmjow’s robe spread over him like a blanket. He stirred and blinked awake at the intrusion, and Grimmjow felt suddenly foolish.

Had the Hollow only been sleeping this whole time?

White’s gaze fell to Grimmjow. The borrowed robe from Grimmjow pooled in his lap as he sat up, wide-eyed and alert, and at the center of his focus was Grimmjow. Where once the Shinigami would have fallen immediately into a battle-ready stance with Pantera drawn, now he did not even flinch.

He could barely sense White’s reiatsu. His face was human, his eyes brown—like dirt, like _mud_. He looked and felt no more than a common boy from the Rukongai, like street fodder destined to live, grind, and ultimately die unknown and nameless among the rats and trash.

A sense of wrongness overcame Grimmjow.

How _dare_ he?

Grimmjow clenched his fists, nails digging deep into his palms. His chest filled with heat and rancor. How dare White degrade himself to something so pitiful? How dare he leash and muzzle the magnificent creature Grimmjow had fallen in thrall to in Hueco Mundo? Did he know how pathetic he looked now? Did he even care?

He had the power to tip the balance of worlds—how could he look so content sleeping wrapped in Grimmjow’s robe with a collar around his neck like a tamed pet?

_Pathetic. Ugly. Stupid._

Grimmjow’s lip curled, uncovering teeth and disdain. He turned on his heel, door slamming shut in his wake.

He heard the door sliding open again and the scramble of bare feet keeping pace behind him. Bystanders stopped in place as their captain stormed through the corridor, but their prying eyes followed him and the disguised Hollow hurrying along in his wake.

He turned a corner. “Get away from me,” he snarled at the Hollow at his elbow.

White did not heed. He narrowed his eyes, tightened his jaw, and grasped the hem of Grimmjow’s captain’s coat.

Grimmjow erupted.

He struck the boy across the face, and three red lines bloomed across White’s cheek. Grimmjow’s blood rushed hot in his veins and loud in his ears. He drew back his other hand, Pantera’s claws on his fingertips—he hadn’t meant to call his sword’s shikai release—and raised it to strike again.

The Hollow didn’t flinch, didn’t draw back or shield himself. He stepped forward with defiance in the deep crease of his brow, and met Grimmjow with his fingers flexed as though he still had claws of his own.

He didn’t.

He had blunt human nails, and this reminder was like oil heaped upon the flames of Grimmjow’s rage.

What did this useless Hollow fuck think he could do against Grimmjow now? Why was he still chasing after him? Why did he still stand up to Grimmjow as though he could meet him as an equal, when he had no sword, no reiatsu, no mask, still clutching Grimmjow’s too-big robe around his shoulders like some helpless waif?

White looked good with blood on his face. It was the only thing on him that was still palatable, more vibrant than his brown eyes and girlish hair. Grimmjow craved more. He wanted blood on White’s other cheek, dripping down his nose, gushing from his mouth and the ruins of those _fucking eyes_ that only ever seemed to seek more of Grimmjow.

How Grimmjow _hated_ him.

His clawed hand came down towards the untouched side of the Hollow’s face, but did not find its mark. White sidestepped and in a swift turn of his body ducked and rammed his knee beneath Grimmjow’s sternum.

Even without reiatsu behind it, the strike landed hard. Grimmjow stumbled back a step with a breathless grunt as all the air was knocked out of him.

White stood over him, not poised for a second hit, with a look on his face that was hard to place but too wide-eyed to be aggression or anger.

How dare he?

Even now, the Hollow looked down on him, as though he was still a match for Grimmjow. As though he wasn’t a pathetic piece of shit Grimmjow could easily grind down into the dust with the differential in their reiatsu alone. Grimmjow gathered his reiatsu and imagined it in his mind—White on his knees before him, strangled under the pressure of his reiatsu, choking, clawing for air.

But there was no reciprocal rise in White’s reiatsu, no challenge to meet his threat, and the anticipation withered to dust. He was hollowed out, and where once he had felt boundless joy in meeting White face to face there was only emptiness now.

Grimmjow lowered his hand. Pantera returned to her sheath. This time when he turned to leave, his footsteps carried alone.  
  


…  
  


Grimmjow didn’t know what became of the Hollow for the remainder of the day, and he told himself he did not care. There was much to do to distract him from his thoughts.

He signed and stamped the pile of new recruit letters left on his desk by third-seat Hisagi, reviewed the upcoming month’s mission and patrol assignments, and finalized the training schedule for the unseated officers. In one afternoon he completed every piece of backed up paperwork Hisagi had been nagging at him to finish for the last month.

The sun was sinking as Grimmjow finally set his brush down beside a stack of papers. It was dinnertime, and he had neglected to eat lunch, but his appetite was strangely absent.

He retrieved his meal from the kitchens nonetheless, and picked at it as he sat in the main courtyard of his division’s barracks. Donburi was a frequent and well-received entrée on the kitchens’ rotation, but Grimmjow managed only a few bites before his interest waned and he set the meal aside.

Long orange hair across the courtyard drew his eye.

Grimmjow sat up straighter, his food forgotten.

White stood alone beneath a flowering plum tree looking upward.

Grimmjow followed his gaze but saw nothing worth notice. The Hollow drew a few second glances from passersby, but from the lack of alarm his presence inspired, his Hollow hole must be hidden. The undue attention was more to do with his strange state of dress. He wore Grimmjow’s robe properly now instead of draped over his shoulders like a cape. It was too large on him, the sleeves hanging past his fingertips and the fine weave of it at odds with the tattered remains of his black trousers which had been his only clothing in Hueco Mundo. He wore no shoes.

No one in Seireitei went around barefoot.

One of the passersby stopped and turned, a black-haired woman Shinigami Grimmjow did not recognize. As she approached White and called to him, Grimmjow narrowed his eyes. From this distance he could not make out what she said, but her demeanor was kindly and hesitant. Asking if he was lost, perhaps. White did appear entirely out of place here.

The Hollow looked at her.

Would he answer? Grimmjow had yet to hear him speak and it rankled that White’s first words might be given to this woman he did not know.

But White shook his head, backed away, and after a moment the woman shrugged and went on her way.

The Hollow turned his gaze up once more. Again, Grimmjow followed, and saw only a plain plum tree dropping pale pink petals like motes of dust in dusk’s cooling light.

Chasing the tail of winter, plum trees were among the first to bloom, and there were many such trees planted all across Seireitei. The blooming of plums heralded the coming of spring, and in weeks to come they would be replaced by waves of apple, cherry, and other flowers.

When was the last time Grimmjow had paid such trivial matters any mind? He recalled some vague appreciation when he’d first set foot in Seireitei as a student of Shin’ō Academy many years ago. There were no carefully manicured gardens and courtyards in the lower districts of Rukongai, and he had marveled at the frivolity of expense on such pointless ornaments.

 _So this is what Shinigami spend their money on,_ he had thought, belly gnawing in memory of hunger in Rukongai. He had not spared another thought to it since.

The Hollow’s expression was mild, but his eyes were large. He held out a hand with upturned palm and carefully plucked a single blossom overhead as though it were a kernel of gold.

A strong wind swept through the courtyard and sent a flurry of petals showering from the tree. Beneath a baptism of plum, the Hollow closed his eyes, his long hair teased like ribbons in the wind, and breathed in deep.

The wind settled; petals dusted the crown of his head.

Grimmjow breathed out.  
  


…  
  


The Hollow was everywhere Grimmjow did not want him to be.

He was in the barracks corridors when Grimmjow rose in the morning. He lingered in the courtyard when Grimmjow took his meal breaks. He sat at the edge of the training fields when Grimmjow practiced his sword forms.

His eyes were always upon Grimmjow. He was silent, but Grimmjow was not fooled. White could speak. He had a name. He was merely stubborn in his refusal to give his voice.

It did not take long for the Shinigami of Grimmjow’s division to notice the newcomer. The bravest of them approached Grimmjow to ask what a commoner from Rukongai was doing amongst their division. The captain met their questions with deflections when his mood was generous, and explosive rebuffs when it was not.

It wasn’t his job to entertain their curiosity, and White was no business of theirs anyways.

He was Grimmjow’s.

But day by day, his presence—ever close, ever too far—drove the captain closer to the brink of a precipice unseen. Orange hair haunted the periphery of his vision, phantom footsteps echoed in his wake. The Hollow was distracting when he was present, and downright maddening when absent.

On the fifth day of this strange wordless dance, Grimmjow arrived at the ninth division’s east training field to find the Hollow already there, standing to the side as though he had been waiting for Grimmjow to arrive.

It was in Grimmjow’s habit to visit this field most mornings to train alone. Had White been learning his schedule?

Fine. Let the Hollow watch. Grimmjow wasn’t going to stop training just because he had an unwanted audience.

He walked towards the field, and as he passed White, he did not miss the way the Hollow narrowed his eyes and lowered his stance with an anticipatory inhale. In the next heartbeat, Grimmjow had unsheathed his sword and turned on his heel with the blade raised—White struck his arm out to defend himself, and though he stopped Pantera by the flat of her blade, a red line split open down the length of his forearm where it pressed against the edge.

Grimmjow pulled back, momentarily stunned.

This…this brazen Hollow _bastard_. Was he really standing his ground right now? He dared glare up at Grimmjow with that challenging glint in his eyes while _unarmed_ with almost no reiatsu? He dared put his bare arm up against the biting edge of Captain Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez’ sword?

Was that what he thought of Grimmjow? So far beneath him that he could counter Pantera bare-handed? Here was White, unarmed and suppressed, a captive Hollow in the den of Shinigami, and he _still_ acted as though he was on equal footing with Grimmjow.

Red heat descended upon Grimmjow. A wild look—a marriage of madness and hunger—came over his face.

He sheathed Pantera. He didn’t need his sword right now. White wanted to fight bare-handed, did he? Well, Grimmjow could oblige. He would beat White to a pulp with his own two fists. He would beat his stingily guarded name out of him, snap back his ribs and claw him open until he knew every muscle, every sinew, every white bone in his body.

What was the Hollow playing at? Giving up his sword, his reiatsu, his power to be prisoner here? What deal had he made with Kyōraku and old man Yama? Grimmjow hated how weak he was now. He hated his plain eyes, his unmasked face, his blunt clawless fingers.

Grimmjow hated _him_.

The first punch, aimed for White’s face, caught empty air when the Hollow ducked. Instead of the satisfying crunch of a nose breaking under Grimmjow’s knuckles, a hard fist plunged into his gut and punched the air out of his chest.

Grimmjow caught himself, and wasting no movement, spun low to the ground and swept the Hollow’s feet out from under him with an outstretched leg. The Hollow righted himself before he hit the ground, his spine curling cat-like, and rushed Grimmjow.

The naivete from these five days past—of wide-eyed moments beneath plum trees and barefooted paces across the ninth division’s compound—evaporated in an instant. Brown eyes gleamed gold. For the first time since Hueco Mundo, something of that splendid white-masked beast breached still waters.

Blood rushed in Grimmjow’s ears. Shock faded, and his face split in two by rows of savage white teeth bared in manic glee.

The white-masked Hollow was not entirely gone, after all. It was still there, trapped behind a deceptive boyish face and an anchored binding kidō. It had been there this whole time.

A sharp series of punches struck him across the chest, and Grimmjow paid it back with a wide kick in the gut that tossed the Hollow back.

He didn’t reach for Pantera. He didn’t reach for his reiatsu. White had neither of these—but that didn’t mean he was unarmed. His fists hit hard, his kicks landed harder, and when Grimmjow felt the sharp pain of a bite on his palm, he was reminded that the Hollow still had teeth too. With a hissed curse, Grimmjow pulled his bloody hand back to his chest. The Hollow spared him no reprieve and launched himself at Grimmjow again.

So it went.

It had been a long, long time since Grimmjow had fought like this, with nothing but bare hands and fighting instinct. He had not realized how much he had missed it.

Grimmjow was a brawler at heart. On the streets of lower Rukongai, he had made his name with bruised knuckles and black eyes, fighting his way through every door closed in his face all the way to Shin’ō Academy. And Pantera breathed the same as he, so when he first laid eyes upon her shikai, it was with awe but little surprise.

Of course his zanpakutō would manifest as claws on his hands and blades on his arms, melding to his body like natural extensions of his fists and spirit. And over all the years as a Shinigami, he had learned to fight with sword and reiatsu until he wielded both as easily as his own fists.

As he and White met blow for blow, flitting around each other like leaves caught in the wind, his heart resonated with the same rapturous harmony he had felt in Hueco Mundo.

White was the same as him. He too had learned to fight before he had a sword, for he took to this like a bird in flight, his fighting instinct as sharp as a zanpakutō’s blade. Grimmjow drew back his fist, and the Hollow was already dodging and aiming a kick towards his open side. When Grimmjow shifted his angle of attack, the Hollow had already anticipated and compensated with a defensive roll.

At the Academy, some students had enjoyed the leisure smoking of an astringent herb that eased pain and induced pleasure more intense than sex. Curious and skeptical, Grimmjow had indulged once.

It paled in comparison to this.

There was no pain, even when his arm _cracked_ and bent the wrong way and blood ran sticky down his collar from a bite that hit bone. His head was abuzz, his pulse singing, the air crisp in his lungs and every color so vibrant how had he ever been so content in black-and-white before?

When he finally collapsed, chest heaving, head spinning, it was side by side with the Hollow.

Grimmjow laid on his back in the dirt, sticky with sweat and blood. His broken arm throbbed, he was bruised all over, his shoulder, hands, and even his calf were marked with crescent-shaped bites. White was little better off. The half-healed claw marks Grimmjow had left on his face days before were bleeding again. Heavy bruising along his torso complemented a split, swollen lip and dislocated shoulder.

“Damned Hollow,” Grimmjow growled, cradling his arm. “You were holding out on me.”

“Ichigo.”

A dozen thoughts cleared from his mind like fanned smoke as Grimmjow looked over, wounds forgotten. “What?”

The Hollow looked back. Was it by a trick of the sunlight that his eyes glittered gold?

“My name is Ichigo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed a shiny new cover picture on this fic. This was a gift done by Shap. Thank you! :)

**Author's Note:**

> Cover image by [@Shapooda](https://twitter.com/Shapooda)
> 
> All illustrations, headcanons, activity updates, and related content can be found on **[my tumblr under the tag for this series](https://copperscript.tumblr.com/tagged/series%3A-Strangers-Again)**. 
> 
> I'm also on twitter [@Copperscript](https://twitter.com/Copperscript)


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